• This is a political forum that is non-biased/non-partisan and treats every person's position on topics equally. This debate forum is not aligned to any political party. In today's politics, many ideas are split between and even within all the political parties. Often we find ourselves agreeing on one platform but some topics break our mold. We are here to discuss them in a civil political debate. If this is your first visit to our political forums, be sure to check out the RULES. Registering for debate politics is necessary before posting. Register today to participate - it's free!

Where does this obama is the messiah idea come from?

Seriously,
I see people calling Obama the One or the messiah. Obviously it is in jest, but where does this idea come from?

Everyone I know in RL has either voted for him or against him because of his proposed policies. Am I living in a bubble or something?

This is the extreme right's ubiquitous method of trying to belittle their opponent by... name calling. :roll: A barometer of how scared they are of him is the level of this childish behavior. The higher the frequency this occurs, and the sillier the names... the more scared the right is. Obviously, they are very, very scared lately. :2wave:
 
This is the extreme right's ubiquitous method of trying to belittle their opponent by... name calling. :roll: A barometer of how scared they are of him is the level of this childish behavior. The higher the frequency this occurs, and the sillier the names... the more scared the right is. Obviously, they are very, very scared lately. :2wave:


Frankly, ADK, with Obama's "royal staff" jammed so deeply down your throat, I don't know how you manage to type your apologist bilge.
 
Frankly, ADK, with Obama's "royal staff" jammed so deeply down your throat, I don't know how you manage to type your apologist bilge.

Apology accepted.
:cool:
 
Much better, but you have some factual errors. Let's look at an actual quote from the Beck article on Holdren:

let's do:

from Holdren's book Ecoscience: Population, Resources, Environment, co-authored with well known Maltusiast Paul Erhlich; as quoted on the Politifact site:

The third approach to population limitation is that of involuntary fertility control. Several coercive proposals deserve discussion, mainly because some countries may ultimately have to resort to them unless current trends in birth rates are rapidly reversed by other means... Adding a sterilant to drinking water or staple foods is a suggestion that seems to horrify people more than most proposals for involuntary fertility control. Indeed, this would pose some very difficult political, legal, and social questions, to say nothing of the technical problems. No such sterilant exists today, nor does one appear to be under development. To be acceptable, such a substance would have to meet some rather stiff requirements: it must be uniformly effective, despite widely varying doses received by individuals, and despite varying degrees of fertility and sensitivity among individuals; it must be free of dangerous or unpleasant side effects; and it must have no effect on members of the opposite sex, children, old people, pets, or livestock... Compulsory control of family size is an unpalatable idea, but the alternatives may be much more horrifying. As those alternatives become clearer to an increasing number of people in the 1980s, they may begin demanding such control. A far better choice, in our view, is to expand the use of milder methods of influencing family size preferences, while redoubling efforts to ensure that the means of birth control, including abortion and sterilization, are accessible to every human being on Earth within the shortest possible time. If effective action is taken promptly against population growth, perhaps the need for the more extreme involuntary or repressive measures can be averted in most countries.

so if they didn't 'propose' (that is, in fact, a proposal, even if they admit it is a problematic one), forced sterilants and forced family planning, they gave it as an option and then declared that it was superior to no population limitation. then he stated that, if voluntary measures were followed, most countries would not require it in order to avoid a worse fate. which means, by exension, that some would.

Notice we are not talking semantics, we are talking an entirely different situation.

actually, no, at this point it has become at best semantics.

Next you point to an article rating Obama's health care claim as a half truth. You point out that the CBO article which scores it differently. The problem with this claim is that the CBO analasys came out March 19th, while the politifact article came out February 1st. So apparently Politifact is biased because they did not use information that was not available yet.

yup. you will notice if you peruse the polling websites, factcheck.org, and other similar functioning groups, they are constantly updating their information. every time new facts become available, they get folded in. yet when information becomes available that would prove embarrassing to the narrative that politifact prefers, somehow, oddly, they don't update their site. huh.

As far as the Obamameter, this is where you get really amusing. They are tracking over 500 promises. Of course many are going to be trivial. The big stuff mixed in with the trivial happens in each of the sections.

agreed. my problem is with their "promises broken" section, where they deliberately give the impression that they are actually tracking, you know, all the promises he's broken.

for example, were I to say "heck, the Honda Accord isn't the best thing in the world, why, it only get's 55 miles to the gallon, and if you hit it with a full-size battleship, some of it's passengers can get hurt"... that would actually be me praising the Honda Accord, in the context of pretending to criticize it. that is what Politifact has done with it's Obameter; and it's funny. ;p
 
let's do:

from Holdren's book Ecoscience: Population, Resources, Environment, co-authored with well known Maltusiast Paul Erhlich; as quoted on the Politifact site:

The third approach to population limitation is that of involuntary fertility control. Several coercive proposals deserve discussion, mainly because some countries may ultimately have to resort to them unless current trends in birth rates are rapidly reversed by other means... Adding a sterilant to drinking water or staple foods is a suggestion that seems to horrify people more than most proposals for involuntary fertility control. Indeed, this would pose some very difficult political, legal, and social questions, to say nothing of the technical problems. No such sterilant exists today, nor does one appear to be under development. To be acceptable, such a substance would have to meet some rather stiff requirements: it must be uniformly effective, despite widely varying doses received by individuals, and despite varying degrees of fertility and sensitivity among individuals; it must be free of dangerous or unpleasant side effects; and it must have no effect on members of the opposite sex, children, old people, pets, or livestock... Compulsory control of family size is an unpalatable idea, but the alternatives may be much more horrifying. As those alternatives become clearer to an increasing number of people in the 1980s, they may begin demanding such control. A far better choice, in our view, is to expand the use of milder methods of influencing family size preferences, while redoubling efforts to ensure that the means of birth control, including abortion and sterilization, are accessible to every human being on Earth within the shortest possible time. If effective action is taken promptly against population growth, perhaps the need for the more extreme involuntary or repressive measures can be averted in most countries.

so if they didn't 'propose' (that is, in fact, a proposal, even if they admit it is a problematic one), forced sterilants and forced family planning, they gave it as an option and then declared that it was superior to no population limitation. then he stated that, if voluntary measures were followed, most countries would not require it in order to avoid a worse fate. which means, by exension, that some would.



actually, no, at this point it has become at best semantics.


Even with your selective quote, it proves the point that Politifact made. He did not advocate forced abortions, he advocated free access to abortions.


yup. you will notice if you peruse the polling websites, factcheck.org, and other similar functioning groups, they are constantly updating their information. every time new facts become available, they get folded in. yet when information becomes available that would prove embarrassing to the narrative that politifact prefers, somehow, oddly, they don't update their site. huh.

This does not indicate bias.



agreed. my problem is with their "promises broken" section, where they deliberately give the impression that they are actually tracking, you know, all the promises he's broken.

for example, were I to say "heck, the Honda Accord isn't the best thing in the world, why, it only get's 55 miles to the gallon, and if you hit it with a full-size battleship, some of it's passengers can get hurt"... that would actually be me praising the Honda Accord, in the context of pretending to criticize it. that is what Politifact has done with it's Obameter; and it's funny. ;p

You are not pointing to any evidence of a lbias anywhere but in your imagination. You would need evidence of, you know, bias, not "OMG, they have too many promises".
 
Last edited:
This is the extreme right's ubiquitous method of trying to belittle their opponent by... name calling. :roll: A barometer of how scared they are of him is the level of this childish behavior. The higher the frequency this occurs, and the sillier the names... the more scared the right is. Obviously, they are very, very scared lately. :2wave:

Oh...wow...just...where to go with this...:rofl

silly childish name calling...from you...now THATS funny. With all the crap about the oil still flowing (and the left can see no administrative failures) and the mounting war dead (and lack of leadership) in Afghanistan and the recent mess in Israel...THAT was funny. That post made me literally laugh out loud and for that I say...thank you!!! :lol:
 
There's a lot of pouting going on by conservatives. Talk about unamerican sore losers.
 
Aunt Spiker said:
For me the joke came from images depicted Obama with a halo-like ring or aura of light around him. . . various online and magazine images as well as some mainstream media propaganda.
VanceMack said:
Perhaps it was the tendency for the media to portray him with Godly/angelic backdrops...auras...while he was running...



LOL...Click Here
 
Correct it was that famous "right winger/republican" Louis Farrakhan that coined the "messiah" nickname. Chuckle. And don't forget that "chill" that the messiah ran up the leg of Chris Matthews..............

So, one would have to find an extremist to quote in order to make fun of liberals/democrats?

Is there anything more mainstream, perhaps someone who is taken seriously by more than 1% of the population perhaps?
 
So, one would have to find an extremist to quote in order to make fun of liberals/democrats?

Is there anything more mainstream, perhaps someone who is taken seriously by more than 1% of the population perhaps?

That would require intellectual honesty.
 
So, one would have to find an extremist to quote in order to make fun of liberals/democrats?

Is there anything more mainstream, perhaps someone who is taken seriously by more than 1% of the population perhaps?

I did not cite a source, someone else did. I think it was newsbusters. A simple Google search will reveal pages and pages of results on the subject and the appropriate chronological documentation as well. Newsbusters completely missed the boat, the phrase was picked up and reported by the "echo chamber" and it has become synonymous with Obama's presidency.

Not surprisingly one the most rabid lefty posters at DP is quite active and on record about the term "teabaggers" being a creation of the right and therefore they just better get used to hearing it, deal with it.................

Obama the messiah, get used to hearing it, deal with it................;)
 
Last edited:
I did not cite a source, someone else did. I think it was newsbusters. A simple Google search will reveal pages and pages of results on the subject and the appropriate chronological documentation as well. Newsbusters completely missed the boat, the phrase was picked up and reported by the "echo chamber" and it has become synonymous with Obama's presidency.

Not surprisingly one the most rabid lefty posters at DP is quite active and on record about the term "teabaggers" being a creation of the right and therefore they just better get used to hearing it, deal with it.................

Obama the messiah, get used to hearing it, deal with it................;)

I think you made a pretty useful comparison here. The term teabagger did get its start in the tea party circles by those who did not realize that there was a sexual connotation to the term. Then, it was picked up by those who would wish to denigrate the movement and it became in epithet.

Obama being the messiah, the one, etc is the same thing. It was started on the left and was picked up by the right for the same purposes as the left uses teabagger.
 
I think you made a pretty useful comparison here. The term teabagger did get its start in the tea party circles by those who did not realize that there was a sexual connotation to the term. Then, it was picked up by those who would wish to denigrate the movement and it became in epithet.

Obama being the messiah, the one, etc is the same thing. It was started on the left and was picked up by the right for the same purposes as the left uses teabagger.

Yip, I agree. It is an ironic bit of trivia though. Of course I've never used any of those terms regarding either Obama or the Tea Party. I leave that kind of material to the really deep thinkers like ADK, Liberal Avenger and Hazelnut on the left and numerous others on the right, who make goading and baiting their calling card.;)
 
I really hate the tea party. I think they are mostly about class warfare.
 
Even with your selective quote, it proves the point that Politifact made. He did not advocate forced abortions, he advocated free access to abortions.

no, he argued that voluntary population control methods (such as free acess to abotion) would, if followed strictly, save us from having to enact forced population control measures (such as forced abortions and public water sterilants) in - and this is important - most places. meaning that such measures would still be necessary to avoid a worse fate, even if strict voluntary family control measures were enated.

if i were to say that killing innocents in wartime is unfortunate, but sometimes you have to, then someone could justly accuse me of proposing an approach to warfare that included the killing of innocents.

This does not indicate bias.

it does. new information that is generally supportive of left-wing preferences is, on the hot-button issues, uploaded pretty quickly on politifact. they already have sections dealing with the Arizona law and the Texas curriculum changes. new information that is embarrassing to their political preferences is.... well, somehow less important.

You are not pointing to any evidence of a lbias anywhere but in your imagination.

actually plenty of people have pointed this out. you'll note i used the examples of Texas and Arizona? I'll throw into that their Acorn coverage. their Arizona page is particularly entertaining; they rate the claim that the new immigration law expressely bans racial profiling as only 'half true'...... when the bill no less than three times, in fact, expressely bans the use of racial profiling. :p. but, as opponents (and politifact) state, it might happen anyway.... so..... you know..... it still counts.... sorta. :roll:

and this is what you would expect; politifact is owned by the left-leaning St Petersberg Times. It's not quite what would happen if the NY Times or Newsweek ran a "fact checking" enterprise, but it's close.

You would need evidence of, you know, bias, not "OMG, they have too many promises".

my problem isn't "OMG they have too many promises"; my issue is that they are ignoring the huge number of statements that have since become, you know, inconvenient (like public financing, which I notice did not make Politifacts' list), and so, you know, are out of the times, and we meant it in a nuanced way to begin with.... again, they can only find 19? conveniently filling three general categories: 1) the stuff left wingers are irritated about 2) the one item (taxes) everyone knows and therefore can't be hid and 3) the stuff nobody cares about.

:shrug: i don't have a problem with people citing politifact on the facts; i think that search organs and organizations with a political bias are fully admissible. my only problem is when people try to bring in their subjective judgements (ie: the 'truthmeter'), or present politifact as though it were some kind of non-partisan reading.
 
Seriously,
I see people calling Obama the One or the messiah. Obviously it is in jest, but where does this idea come from?

Everyone I know in RL has either voted for him or against him because of his proposed policies. Am I living in a bubble or something?

A variety of reasons I think...

1. One could point to the "cult like" following Obama had. Many refered to it as a "rockstar" following as well, however I think "Cult Like" is generally more apt because it was a following based more on ideas than on talent, the difference in part between say a cult leader or even a motivational speaker and a rockstar or actor being followed. People swarmed to Obama, drawing massive crowds simply for the seeming sake of seeing HIM, of being a part of his historic movement. You had songs being written about him, artwork being created, an outpouring of adulation for a relatively new politician to the national stage was unlike what had previously been seen. The fact so much of it was wrapped up around little actual policy at the early points but simply the message and all it stood for added to this.

2. The foundation from which it came. 2004, the DNC, the fresh faced senatorial candidate giving a speech that ended up being far more memorable than anything the actual candidate really did. From that point forward it was a sort of destined thing in the minds of many it seemed that this was to be the man to lead the Democrats back from the dregs of the 2000's. It I believe helped to start the "savior" idea, not necessarily in a religious sense but the analogy grew from that.

3. The message itself, the very focal point of his campaign. Hope and Change? Hope, essentially faith, that thing would be better, that things could be done right, that he was the answer to all their problems. Change? Change from Bush, change from bad politcies, change from bad politics, change from how people viewed the country, change from how we viewed ourselves. Change, through salvation, by the hand of Obama who would make the world love us, who would show we're not racist, who would mend the evils that were done by Bush and Cheney...mind you, two people who throughout their tenure were often refered to through words and depictions as devils. The entire theme around it screamed out to the notion of a messiah, one to lead both the democrats to the promised land and the American people out of the shadow of death that was the worlds view of us. Hope and Change, Faith and Salvation.

4. The media's presentation of it. Much like people like Olbermann taking someone saying that people were asked to send tea bags to the white house and use it to label the entire movement as "tea baggers", people heard the media making constant comparisons of him to Jesus based on the community organizer thing and him being the savior of the Democrat Party or the potential to "save" the U.S.'s image abroad and thus using it to label him "The Messiah" (AKA a savior).

5. Imagery.

obama_halo_4.jpg


obama-halo.jpg


Etc. Just added fuel to the fire.

6. Jealousy. The guy ran a hell of a campaign and stirred a desire to be politically active, even if it was on an entirely fluff based message, that has been unseen for quite some time. This spurs jealousy in people which can lead to the desire to ridicule it.

I think a mix of all that lead to the rather juvenile in my mind (much like using "tea bagger") messiah stuff that was so heavily used during the campaign and still used some today.
 
Equally foolish.

That's my point.


Some made it their stawman. The ol' 'the bigger they are the harder they fall' fallacy. It's just a lot easier to bobble a loftier target than it is to take it on straight up.
 
Back
Top Bottom