(07-19-2016 09:48 AM)Hood-rich Wrote:  

(07-19-2016 09:40 AM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  

(07-19-2016 09:01 AM)Hood-rich Wrote:  Owl, to be perfectly fair, you have a pretty unbelievable story as well. 2 time Rice grad with a 3rd (law) degree I believe. You claim to personally know the Bush's, the Paul's and I'm sure you've mentioned other famous folks. You have claimed travel all over the world on this forum as well. All that said you post here which I find really strange if your credentials are genuine.
I dont mean that to be rude. Im just trying to be fair here. Ive always thought it was odd/unbelievable as well. And I cant stand Obama.

What's so unbelievable? I know several people with very similar stories. Two of them post on here, or at least on the Rice board. I don't want to give too many specifics because there are people on here who make me treasure the anonymity, but I think I can share a few details without blowing my cover. As I said, there's nothing here that couldn't apply to a number of people I know.

Went to Rice on a Navy ROTC scholarship, did 4 years active duty traveling the world on 4 deployments, back to get a master's and later law degree on the GI bill. Worked in the administrative law, bankruptcy, and transactions areas. Clients were in oil and gas, health care, and banking. You pretty much travel the world if you are doing deals in the oil patch. Still travel a lot, mostly for rugby matches and knocking out bucket list items.

GHWB taught at Rice and also attended the same church (St. Martin's) for a while. I was the statistician for TV broadcasts of the Rangers when GWB owned them. Ron Paul used to do a talk show on Rice radio, later one of his sons and one of his daughters were clients. Son is still a client, has been since 1984, and we were actually on the phone discussing a deal for about an hour yesterday.

I guess I've always king of gone for the gusto, and maybe I've done more different things than a lot of people. But I know people who have done more. So it just doesn't seem unusual to me at all. Maybe it's just the crowd I hang out with. Rice people generally seem to be much more doers than watchers.

There are a bunch of people on here who can vouch for most or all of the above--Hambone, OO, 75src, FBO, among others. If your question is why I post on this board (and there is some indication it may be), I've been pretty heavily involved in Rice athletics for decades, started out posting on the Rice board when it was hosted elsewhere, when the Rice mods began to discourage political arguments to focus more specifically on sports, a bunch of us migrated over here for political discussion. I'm semi-retired now, teach, so I work 3 days a week, 9 months a year, and have a lot of free time. A lot of the political commentary is reality checking stuff that I'm working on publishing.

Never said I personally didnt believe you. You are probably in the 1% to 5% range of people with that level of raw intelligence and life experiences. Obama (or any President really) is probably just as rare.

Personally, Im just an average Joe who came from a "white trash" background (dad would say his in thise terms exactly) that worked my way up the hard way. School of hard knocks eventually turned into ECU for 2 years on my late 20s. Proud of that in a strange way that you and others here probably can fathom.

Point being, everybody has different life experience and circumstance. Im just not sure why his life is any more unbelievable in a world of 350 mil. If anybody should "get it" here it seems like you would. Jmho.

He lived in Houston and is politically involved. I didn't know the Bushes or Pauls, but I knew Rob Mosbacher Jr. and one of James Baker's sons. The Houston mayor, Bill White, went to my church. I knew a lot of people Owl as a Houstonian would recognize-Blanton, Scurlock, Weingarten, Smith. Now I didn't socialize with them, but I knew them from business.

I guess I just dont get why Obama's background is unbelievable. It's totally believeable considering the past 8 years.

(07-19-2016 09:53 AM)Redwingtom Wrote:  

(07-19-2016 09:48 AM)Hood-rich Wrote:  Never said I personally didnt believe you. You are probably in the 1% to 5% range of people with that level of raw intelligence and life experiences. Obama (or any President really) is probably just as rare.
Personally, Im just an average Joe who came from a "white trash" background (dad would say his in thise terms exactly) that worked my way up the hard way. School of hard knocks eventually turned into ECU for 2 years on my late 20s. Proud of that in a strange way that you and others here probably can fathom. Angry about sometimes too because of the times that were so damn hard.
Point being, everybody has different life experience and circumstance. Im just not sure why his life is any more unbelievable in a world of 350 mil. If anybody should "get it" here it seems like you would. Jmho.

It's not. And I think it's become pretty clear why he doesn't believe it.

I've tried to say this several times and it keeps getting glossed over. The part of his life that I find truly unbelievable is that every major influence on his life that has been identified by him or anyone else--parents, grandparents, Frank Marshall Davis, the Marxist professors that he hung around with because he thought they were "cool," Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers--is from the extreme far left socialist/communist portion of the political spectrum, but he has been presented to us as some centrist consensus-builder--probably because he would not be electable as a socialist/communist. That's the part that I find frankly unbelievable.

And I don't have anything like that in my past. Nor does anyone else I know have a political agenda that is totally counter to every life experience or mentor that he or she has ever had. Reagan actually had a pretty far left wing upbringing. But Reagan could point to specific events and influences that changed his mind. What changed Obama's mind and made him become a centrist? Off the last 8 years, I'd say nothing, he is no centrist.

The questions about the other stuff spring from that. If he's lying about that, what else is he lying about? And why is everything so secretive? That's kind of my other point here. I think we need to require a lot more disclosures from would-be presidents. Not just tax returns, but also military records (if any), complete transcripts, copies of any and all theses or dissertations or other elements of their paper trail, health records, at a minimum. And that would apply equally to all. Yes at least some of those are private records--you want to be president, you give up some privacy.

But if I try to state this, you keep trying to deflect it into some Kenyan Muslim conspiracy theory conflation that has nothing to do with the point that I am making.

I don't think he's a Kenyan. His mother was a US citizen. That makes him a natural-born US citizen, whether he was born in Hawaii or Kenya or the White House or on the moon. Just like Ted Cruz. There is no issue there.

I don't think he's a Muslim. Based on his involvement with Rev. Wright's church, he would appear to be a liberation theology Christian. Liberation theology is the communist party at prayer. Literally. Look up its history if you don't believe me. I'd prefer he were a Muslim.

I don't know of any conspiracy theory that I believe. I see things that don't make sense, but I have no knowledge of the true facts and no tools with which to ferret them out. I am incredibly disappointed that the people who do have those tools--primarily the MSM--have chosen to accept his statements (Bill Ayers was "just some guy in the neighborhood") at face value, or in the case of Fox to go chasing off after stupid stuff like the birth certificate.

My comment about grades was at least half joking--if you note the context, someone had said people who graduate SCL from Harvard law don't make bad grades at Oxy, and my comment was that by the same token, people who make bad grades at Oxy don't graduate SCL from Harvard. It's probably my mistake for posting something that could be so easily deflected.

From that post Owl, I think what you find unbelievable is that people still look at him and see a centrist or a moderate liberal instead of a full-blown socialist...or whatever you feel is worse than that. That's fine if you don't want to believe that.

But how any of that would play into why anyone (seemingly you) would doubt that he earned his way to graduate SCL from Harvard is what makes little sense.

While I don't agree, I certainly would not condemn you for that. If you look at my initial problem with your posts on this thread and others, it's that you seem to buy into this nonsense that his grades at Oxy were anything less than fine or normal. Clearly you don't know, so just stop mentioning that he might have and there's no issue with me at all. Further, if you recall awhile back, I noted that there was actually an ongoing scandal around the time O was at Oxy where students were being given better grades than many deserved...so to say his grades were low there makes even less sense!

(07-19-2016 11:59 AM)Redwingtom Wrote:  From that post Owl, I think what you find unbelievable is that people still look at him and see a centrist or a moderate liberal instead of a full-blown socialist...or whatever you feel is worse than that. That's fine if you don't want to believe that.
But how any of that would play into why anyone (seemingly you) would doubt that he earned his way to graduate SCL from Harvard is what makes little sense.
While I don't agree, I certainly would not condemn you for that. If you look at my initial problem with your posts on this thread and others, it's that you seem to buy into this nonsense that his grades at Oxy were anything less than fine or normal. Clearly you don't know, so just stop mentioning that he might have and there's no issue with me at all. Further, if you recall awhile back, I noted that there was actually an ongoing scandal around the time O was at Oxy where students were being given better grades than many deserved...so to say his grades were low there makes even less sense!

Fair enough. My big issue is the whole socialist/communist thing, and I still think he is at heart. I think he has consistently pushed the needle as far left as he could get away with, and the points where he stopped short were only because he didn't have the votes to push harder. I do think that first republicans and then Hillary and then the media simply failed to vet him sufficiently on that. I think he lied when questioned at all about the issue, and nobody asked the follow up questions that I would have expected.

As I said, I find that part unbelievable and that makes me wonder about the truth of the whole story. Part of me thinks the whole story is made up. I don't believe the conspiracy stuff. That is even more unbelievable than the narratives we are given. But I don't believe the rest of it either at this point. It. Just doesn't ring true to me, doesn't pass my smell test. Part of it is that years ago I did some pro bono work defending street kids caught dealing drugs. The hardest part was getting them to stop trying to BS me and tell the truth. I learned how to read when they were lying and when they were telling the truth. And their mannerisms when they were lying are exactly what I see Obama doing--gestures, inflection, slang language. In case you are thinking of some racist allegation, most of those kids were Caucasian.

He won't be president much longer sit his may go away, at least for him. But a separate issue for me is that I find it amazing that we ask for so little disclosure from presidential candidates. Tax returns and medical records are good, but we should also get full transcripts, copies of theses, dissertations, and full paper trail, military records. That's a whole separate issue for me, and the juxtaposition of the two probably engendered some of the rabbit trail stuff. I will say that if Obama has disclosed all those items and they supported the narrative, I could probably get more comfortable with the narrative.

(07-19-2016 02:26 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  Part of me thinks the whole story is made up. I don't believe the conspiracy stuff.

Dude, you're making my head hurt!!!

(07-19-2016 02:43 PM)Redwingtom Wrote:  

(07-19-2016 02:26 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  Part of me thinks the whole story is made up. I don't believe the conspiracy stuff.

Dude, you're making my head hurt!!!

You basically jumped all over the conspiracy angle (which I don't think I've ever supported), apparently as the only alternative to the story that Obama has fed us. There's a big wide wonderful world full of other options besides those two. I don't know what happened. I don't find the Obama party line believable. I don't find the conspiracy theories believable. I don't know what the hell happened.

It's like you go into surgery for your left knee, and when you wake up it's your right knee that's all bandaged. You don't know exactly what happened, but you know somebody screwed up. That's the way I feel about Obama.