2012 Tuesday: ‘2016′ says we don’t know the president we elected in 2008
At a friend’s request, I went to the theater Sunday to see “2016: Obama’s America” (it’s true, I’m not the most political person I know). The movie, if you haven’t heard, is the work of Dinesh D’Souza, the Indian-born conservative commentator and college president whose 2010 book, “The Roots of Obama’s Rage,” argued the president’s world view was shaped heavily by his anti-colonialist Kenyan father.
I’m no movie critic, so I’ll spare you my thoughts on the cinematography (I’ll only note that D’Souza worked on the film with Hollywood veteran Gerald R. Molen, and it shows in the film’s production quality). The movie’s about our president’s past and what that means for our future, and I’ll focus on that.
D’Souza dispenses early on with any notions of birtherism, noting briefly, but pointedly, that Obama was born in Hawaii. Instead, he makes the far more interesting argument that what’s foreign is Obama’s ideology, shaped in absentia by a father he barely knew. His evidence for his claim is two-fold: Excerpts from Obama’s own autobiography, “Dreams From My Father” (the film liberally quotes from the audio version of the book, narrated by Obama himself), and footage from D’Souza’s travels to the places of Obama’s youth, Hawaii and Indonesia, as well as to Kenya. There are also phone conversations, videotaped on both ends, with sociologists such as Shelby Steele who try to explain what makes Obama tick.
What D’Souza turns up on his trips is often less than compelling: Brief doesn’t begin to describe what he gets from an interview with a retired Hawaii professor who knew Obama’s mother, Stanley Ann Dunham; a lengthier exchange with Obama’s half-brother, George, in Nairobi ultimately fails to land a blow on the president. But that’s not to say there’s no substance to the story.
Briefly, D’Souza’s narrative goes like this: The elder Obama was an anti-colonialist (this much is confirmed in interviews with a pair of his contemporaries; Obama Sr. of course died in a car wreck in 1982) whose antipathy toward Kenya’s British rulers was distinct from America’s earlier rebellion from the British in that it was also a rejection of the West and capitalism. Dunham (who died in 1995) fervently transferred these beliefs to a young Barack — and even sent him home to Hawaii from Indonesia when her second husband, Lolo Soetoro, took a job with a U.S. oil company and got a little too friendly with actual breathing capitalists. Back in Hawaii, her father arranged for young Barack to have a mentor named Frank Marshall Davis, a writer and card-carrying Communist who was on the FBI’s radar. From there, we hear of Obama’s adult associations with which we’re more familiar, including Bill Ayers and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
This is a vetting of Obama’s background that, D’Souza plausibly argues, was given short shrift in the 2008 campaign. For instance, D’Souza notes that Obama’s famous speech about race relations, to address the steady stream of Wright’s controversial statements (uncovered, let’s remember, while he was still contesting the Democratic primary against Hillary Clinton), was a deflection from the collectivist black liberation theology that laced Wright’s incendiary sermons. That, D’Souza claims, allowed Obama to keep his dealings with Marxists mostly out of the public eye on his way to the White House.
It is a vetting that is worthwhile for anyone interested in current U.S. politics, if only because it is so reliant on Obama’s own words. (Here, I must acknowledge I haven’t read “Dreams” and can’t say whether D’Souza is cherry-picking Obama’s quotes or taking them out of context; if he did, however, he has given his critics a huge tool to use in discrediting him.) As an immigrant from another former British colony who is the same age as Obama, D’Souza presents an intriguing figure with alternating sympathy for and critique of anti-colonialism.
That’s the first half of the movie. From there, D’Souza delves into purely political commentary and prognostication that most likely will resonate with you, or not, in close correlation with your own political leanings. I won’t spoil his conclusions, but I will say they err toward the most pessimistic, even conspiratorial end of the right side of the spectrum.
If there’s a tragic aspect of the film, it’s that the only people likely to see it are those who have already made up their minds against Barack Obama. It deserves as well an airing among his supporters and those precious few who are unsure about him, to point out where they think D’Souza is wrong and consider the ways he might be right.
– By Kyle Wingfield
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912 comments Add your comment
Finn McCool (The System isn't Broken; It's Fixed)
August 15th, 2012
1:05 pm
Playing with percentages in statistics, when the variables; i.e. the starting points, are wildly different, is an exercise in DECEPTION
duh. Most people versed in how to properly do this type of analysis know how to limit the “wildly different” stuff.
Here’s two ways to compare Obama and W’s spending:
Pick a date and write down the total dollar amount of debt on that day – let’s use the day before W took office.
Now, look at the debt on the day W left office as a percentage of the baseline date from above.
Now, choose a date close to know for Obama and look at it as a percentage of the baseline date.
Or, method 2, pick the date before W went into office and compare the debt on his final day in office as a percentage.
Now, do the same thing for Obama pick any recent date and compare that to the date Obama went into office.
JamVet
August 15th, 2012
1:07 pm
…there’ll be ways around it just like the current system…
No doubt.
Even so, it should keep the more juvenile people out of these forums.
Which is only a good thing…
Finn McCool (The System isn't Broken; It's Fixed)
August 15th, 2012
1:07 pm
Yeah, the new rules should limit the number of illegals voting and other voting fraud.
I tells ya, it’s rampant!
We libs will have to get the Black Panthers to patrol teh blogs.
Tiberius - pulling the tail of the left AND right when needed
August 15th, 2012
1:09 pm
Finn, you just described HOW to use percentages, but not WHEN to use percentages. More deception.
If your argument is that someone spends more than another, you CANNOT use percentages if the starting points are not the same. Period.
Rafe Hollister, suffering through Oblamer's ineptocracy
August 15th, 2012
1:10 pm
Jamvet/Amvet
Who changes names frequently? I have never changed my name.
Finn McCool (The System isn't Broken; It's Fixed)
August 15th, 2012
1:12 pm
Bill Gates is putting $300 million into re-engineering our toilets!
SWEEEET!
@@
August 15th, 2012
1:12 pm
AmVet:
VERY bad news for the preponderance of cowardly cons (primarily) who change names quicker than they change their underwear.
Ditto what Hillbilly said.
I’m more into quality than quantity…and I must say…when it comes to quality…it’s the conservative commandos that rule this blog.
yeah right
August 15th, 2012
1:13 pm
“I’m more into quality than quantity…and I must say…when it comes to quality…it’s the conservative commandos that rule this blog.”
You excluded
Just saying
@@
August 15th, 2012
1:13 pm
AmVet, on the other hand, rarely changes his “thought”, much less his underwear.
ew and SCHNIRT!
yeah right
August 15th, 2012
1:15 pm
@@
If you are dittoing HillBilly D, you will notice that he didn’t mention that any side was better or worse.
just saying
Finn McCool (The System isn't Broken; It's Fixed)
August 15th, 2012
1:15 pm
If your argument is that someone spends more than another, you CANNOT use percentages if the starting points are not the same. Period.
So, we can’t look at Microsft’s sales performance in Q2 of 2012 as a percentage change and compare that performance to Q2 of 2011 as a percentage change?
Brighter minds than yours do this every single day…
“Revenues increased 4% in Q2 2012, vs a decrease of 1.4% in the same period last year.”
Yeah, that’s so wrong it hurt….
iggy
August 15th, 2012
1:15 pm
“We libs will have to get the Black Panthers to patrol teh blogs.”
Thats the NEW Black Panthers, to you, Mister. And might as well as the US District Attorney sees nothing wrong with it.
Tiberius - pulling the tail of the left AND right when needed
August 15th, 2012
1:16 pm
“Who changes names frequently?”
Trashman, for one. He’s currently doing the Myth Robme moniker, but he changes names about a frequently as the weather around here.
Some of the internet stalkers as well.
@@
August 15th, 2012
1:18 pm
yeah right:
You excluded
You’ll get no argument from me.
Surprised?
Tiberius - pulling the tail of the left AND right when needed
August 15th, 2012
1:19 pm
Finn, you’re either being deliberately dense today, or you just don’t get it.
MarkV’s PREMISE is that Bush spent more than Obama. You cannot use a variable starting point and use percentages to prove that point. Period.
Lil' Barry Bailout - Vote American
August 15th, 2012
1:20 pm
Obozo wants “shared prosperity”, but I’m still waiting to hear how the bus drivers and the janitors are going to be sharing theirs.
JamVet
August 15th, 2012
1:21 pm
Speaking of juvenile, did I just feel that oh so familiar naughty little girl humping on my leg?
For the two thousand, four hundred and sixty third time?
iggy
August 15th, 2012
1:21 pm
“You cannot use a variable starting point and use percentages to prove that point”
Why not? Obama, Biden, Nasty Pelosi, Reid, Goron, Daschle etc do it everyday.
@@
August 15th, 2012
1:22 pm
yeah right:
I once proved that AmVet was a namechanger. Now I can only speculate as to how many different names he uses.
I don’t spend time worrying about.
I leave that to folks like Kamchak and AmVet. They’ve become obsessed with the endless possibilities.
Finn McCool (The System isn't Broken; It's Fixed)
August 15th, 2012
1:22 pm
What’s this talk of us being in a new war before November? Israel is going to strike Iran? Huh?
@@
August 15th, 2012
1:24 pm
humping on my leg
AmVet doesn’t get to use that at jay’s anymore. It’s one of his favorites so……..
here he is.
iggy
August 15th, 2012
1:25 pm
“Obozo wants shared prosperity”.
He wants everyone to have a lobotomy and a HoverRound.
Spin City
August 15th, 2012
1:28 pm
@@
No, but your hero Tiberius loves to use that phrase on this blog.
He will be crying shortly
MarkV
August 15th, 2012
1:28 pm
Dusty @ 12:45 pm
We may or may not have different concepts on how to help an ailing economy. But what we certainly have different concepts about is how to debate issues, any issue. My concept is to either present an argument, or to submit a contra-argument to what somebody else has submitted, and let the facts and logic show, which one is more valid. You concept appears to either to ignore the arguments, or answer any specific argument with generalities, or even to present generalities as a response to what has not been argued. In addition, while I try to depersonalize issues, you seem always to personalize them. Telling me what I think, what my ideas are. You do not know what my ideas are, other than in case of the very specific issues or concepts I write about.
JamVet
August 15th, 2012
1:29 pm
And humping away you are, snorter.
Which is spectacular.
After all these years that I can still make you do that. Almost on command.
It is such a shame that you can’t do it non-stop over at Bookman’s like you used to.
Silly little thing.
Spin City
August 15th, 2012
1:31 pm
@@
Show JamVet that you can post at Bookman’s.
Show him good. You can, right?
MarkV
August 15th, 2012
1:32 pm
Finn, you cannot argue with people who just make things up. Example:
“MarkV’s PREMISE is that Bush spent more than Obama.” Can you find anywhere in what I have written a claim that Bush spent more than Obama?
Tiberius - pulling the tail of the left AND right when needed
August 15th, 2012
1:32 pm
Another internet stalker who changes their blog name @ 1:28.
Tiberius - pulling the tail of the left AND right when needed
August 15th, 2012
1:34 pm
“and let the facts and logic show, which one is more valid.”
Except your “logic” is usually based on deception and wordsmithing, rather than on actual logic.
@@
August 15th, 2012
1:35 pm
Spin City:
I never complained about AmVet using that phrase. It was jay.
I’ve witnessed Tiberius using it once.
Tiberius, my hero?
I find Tiberius to be not only smart but VERY SMART. He does, however, lack a sense of humor.
Tiberius - pulling the tail of the left AND right when needed
August 15th, 2012
1:38 pm
Case in point, MarkV, your 1:32 post.
Your premise was to show @@ that Bush was a more profligate spender than Obama. Without using the exact words to describe it (so that you could weasel out of the charge with the wordsmithing wriggle you use rather ineffectively when caught in your lies), you tried to make the point using percentages with different variables, which has been exposed as being grossly deceptive.
Tiberius - pulling the tail of the left AND right when needed
August 15th, 2012
1:39 pm
“He does, however, lack a sense of humor.”
Hey!
ITS ALL BUSHS FAULT
August 15th, 2012
1:39 pm
We sure know who the GOP obbsructionists are… losers..
Finn McCool (The System isn't Broken; It's Fixed)
August 15th, 2012
1:40 pm
National Debt on W’s first day in office 1/19/2001: $5.727 trillion
National Debt on W’s last day in office 1/19/2009: $10.628 trillion
By the end of his 8 years, W oversaw an increase of 86%
Looking just at today’s exact same date in the timeline of W’s Presidency we get this:
National debt on 8/13/2004: $7.312 trillion, an increase of 28% over the 1/19/2001 amount.
National Debt on Obama’s first day in office 1/19/2009: $10.628 trillion
National debt this week: $15.915 trillion, an increase of 50%
So, yes, Obama is on an 8 year trajectory to surpass W’s spending spree. Obama has gone up 50% compared to W’s 28% at this same point in his presidency.
Data source: http://www.treasurydirect.gov/NP/NPGateway
ITS ALL BUSHS FAULT
August 15th, 2012
1:41 pm
Tib your a water carrying tool ….
ITS ALL BUSHS FAULT
August 15th, 2012
1:45 pm
Attention cons between Rob-Me and his buttboy Ryan you got nothing,,, OBAMA 2012…
Tiberius - pulling the tail of the left AND right when needed
August 15th, 2012
1:46 pm
Much better, Finn!
@@
August 15th, 2012
1:48 pm
Spin city:
If I posted on jay’s terms (under another name), I could.
I don’t like jay’s terms so I don’t.
I make an exception only when some leftist challenges my freedom to do so. Not my fault jay won’t let the @@ shine thru.
Tiberius - pulling the tail of the left AND right when needed
August 15th, 2012
1:52 pm
Wow. How to come up with a response to “Its all bushs fault” . . . .
Nope. No need to feed the troll.
Spin City
August 15th, 2012
1:52 pm
@@
So you can’t. Figured it would make JamVet look like a fool if you did
retiredds
August 15th, 2012
1:54 pm
Example of Republican doublespeak:
In an effort to seize the offensive, Romney has started running a television ad slamming Obama for the $716 billion in Medicare spending cuts without mentioning that his running mate proposed the same reductions or that voiding them would blow a giant hole in Republican plans to reduce the deficit.
The R’s must think no one’s paying attention.
Finn McCool (The System isn't Broken; It's Fixed)
August 15th, 2012
1:55 pm
Looking at the data each year on August 13th, W averaged raising the debt 10 percentage points (over the baseline) per year (almost exactly 10% each year) until 8/13/2008. Between 8/13/2008 and 1/19/2009 (5 months) it jumped 18 percentage points!
Obama went up 25% in his first year and then settled down at 12-13 percentage point increases for the last two years.
getalife
August 15th, 2012
1:58 pm
ryan got stumped like palin on fox already.
Hume was surprised but I was not.
SlickRick
August 15th, 2012
1:59 pm
@ @@ – “I find Tiberius to be not only smart but VERY SMART.”
Takes a fool to know one, I guess.
Schnirt and (y)ew
JDW
August 15th, 2012
2:00 pm
@Tiberius…”When the country’s total debt is LOWER (as it was during the Bush years), increasing your PERCENTAGE of debt by $5 trillion in 8 years looks a lot worse when you increase your debt by that same dollar amount in just 4 years.”
Interesting thought, not uncommon among those that don’t really understand the importance of the rate of change vs the aggregate.
The way most people choose to compare numbers over time is in constant dollar figures. For example say 2005 constant dollars…
In Clinton’s last budget year 2001 the surplus was $142.7 billion and in Duhbya’s last budget year it was $1.274 trillion. For a increase under Duhbya of $1.4167 trillion. Now last time I brought this up Kyle and I finally arrived at a figure of around $252 billion (in 2005 dollars) that was spent in 2009 that Duhbya didn’t ask for so lets adjust that out and say that under Duhbya the deficit increased by $1.1647 trillion dollars.
Now to the question of Obama. In 2012 the budget deficit is estimated to be $1.0329 Trillion. In Duhbya’s last year it was 1.022 trillion (the $1.274 less the $252 adjustment) which means that during Obama’s tenure, relative to his predecessor, he has increased the budget deficit by 10.9 billion.
So to recap, in constant 2005 dollars…
-Duhbya increased the deficit by $1.1647 TRILLION
-Obama has increased the deficit by $10.9 billion.
In terms of percentages Obama has increased the annual deficit about 1% of the amount that Duhbya did.
Tiberius - pulling the tail of the left AND right when needed
August 15th, 2012
2:01 pm
I heard the rules about posting another person’s name gets you banned, getalife.
And that IS true.
Up Up and Away
August 15th, 2012
2:01 pm
getalife
In his mind and in the mind of some of his sheepish flock, yes.
Reality? No
@@
August 15th, 2012
2:01 pm
Spin:
Figured it would make JamVet look like a fool if you did
AmVet voted for Ralph Nader. There’s no bigger fool than a Nader tater.
getalife
August 15th, 2012
2:02 pm
Ti,
I don’t wank names and don’t let him take over your blog.
SlickRick
August 15th, 2012
2:02 pm
JDW – Tiberius won’t get it; there’s too much facts and logic and data and stuff in there. He responds better to lies, half truths, obfuscations and demagoguery.