Thanks for the laugh

Sure, dear supporters of fake Prof. Obama

I keep wondering when Hillary is going to claim her alleged attempt to join the Marine Corps in 1975 (www.washingtonpost.com/.../AR2007120801551.html) as actual military experience that qualifies her to be Commander in Chief.

Now that her claim to have reunified Ireland and to have led combat missions in Bosnia have been debunked, it can only be a matter of time before Hillary raises her near-Corps experience.

(Which probably didn't actually happen, but if it did it would have represented last-minute second thoughts about marrying Bill after her own failure to pass the DC bar let him bring her back to Arkansas to follow his career. Interesting to think about what could have been had Hillary joined the Marines as a JAG officer at the start of the rebuilding of the armed forces and had Bill entered politics as a single man.)

jacob, that whole "professor" thing is bunkum, and you know it. Professor is both a formal job title and a description. Kind of like "captain." If a person with the rank of Commander is in command of a ship, he is still the captain of the ship, even though he has not yet attained the rank of Captain. Similarly with college and university teachers. If you recall your student days, the common practice is to refer to your lecturer as "professor" whether she is a tenured member of faculty with the word "professor" in her title or whether she is merely a junior adjunct visiting lecturer. Hell, in my day (a long time ago, when a man named George Bush was president, we were at war in Iraq, and the economy was tanking, if today's youngsters can even imagine such circumstances) etiquette required referring to TAs as "professor" if they were lecturing.

A person who teaches college courses is a professor.

C'mon folks, the Bosnia story shows Hillary would be a much better commander-in-chief than McCain. When McCain tried to visit North Vietnam during the dust-up there in the 60's and 70's, he couldn't even land his plane. He wound up floating in a pond and had to have someone pull him so he could check into the local Hilton (where I hear he got room service every day, or almost every day anyway). In stark contrast, Hillary flew into an honest-to-God war zone in Bosnia, managed to bring her plane in safely (thank God, because Sinbad's and Sheryl Crow's best work was still ahead of them then - what if they had been lost?) and then braved the bombs bursting in air to exchange greetings with a young girl who'd wandered into a war zone.

jacob -- I ran a seminar at Yale a couple of years ago (formal title: lecturer), and the students called me and other non-tenure-track teachers "Professor" *all the time*. Totally common practice.

thanks rhubarbs and jj. for that matter have you seen the Clintons talking about some of the other "lies" of Obama. He said his parents met at the Selma march, when that march happened years after he was born, but nobody considered that maybe that is the story his mother told him as a child, that his parents met at a civil rights march and maybe he confused it with Selma (as a child perhaps that is the only march he had heard of) and the idea stuck. Being that both his parents are dead it seems kind of ghoulish to even bring it up. As to his parents being progressive enough to attend a march ever? Well, hell they married each other back in the day when half the states declared interracial marriages illegal.

Hillary's lies are both numerous and ridiculous, not simply mistakes but downright lies. In her defensive and arrogant "apology" she said that this was the first such mistake she has made in 12 years. Talk about delusional arrogance. If she just fessed up and said it was a big fish story, the kind where everyone inflates a situation even in their own mind till they believe it is true, I would cut her some slack, but not Hillary. No, she said she misspoke, as though it is entirely possible for people to confuse a walk in a park with a walk in a minefield, happens to me all the time.

As a Clinton suporter all I can say is touche - it's pretty funny.  geoffgraham gets points for the funniest post today.

Asl for the Professor, reminds me of a riff by Tom and Ray Magliozzi of NPR's Car Talk - You know you're Italian if . . .  "Your one year of community college earns you the title 'Il Professore' from your 2 elderly aunts."

blackton, that reminds me of how, when I was a young child, my grandparents would tell me stories about the ancestor for whom I was named, and so was grandpa, and his grandpa, and so on, back to the original member of my family with the name, who was a famous general in the Revolutionary War.

Much later, as an adult, I remembered those stories and did a little digging to find out why the history books never seem to mention a Revolutionary War general with my name. Turns out he is well known, but he was a major, and he fought in the French and Indian War.

If that were the kind of stuff Hillary were getting wrong, I would defend her absolutely. It's not a lie to get your facts wrong, particularly with family anecdotes like that. Heck, back when Hillary claimed she was named after Sir Edmund Hillary, I didn't think anything of it, even though the dates make that impossible. That's exactly the kind of thing a dad would tell his young daughter when she hears her own name in the news, and it's not a child's job to fact-check every family story her parents ever told her.

Y'all come down South here and ask around a bit and you'll discover that Stonewall Jackson must have had at least 3 million men in his brigade, and that at least 12 million Southern men fought at Gettysburg. Yet we don't call everyone whose gramma and grampa regaled them with stories of great-grandad burying Stonewall's arm or being the last man down from Pickett's charge a liar for repeating the story today.

geoffgraham - hilarious. great stuff, more please.

t

Blackton and Rhubarbs, I have a similar story to that. My dad misremembered some part of his family history. He told me a couple of years ago that we were descended from some Chasidic rabbi, and that we could find it in this Hebrew book he had called "Hachasidut" -- he said there was some guy who was underlined who was our ancestor. It seemed plausible from what we knew about his family's background. It goes back three generations before me, to Poland, where apparenly my great-grandfather was a Lubavitcher. Well, one day I opened up this "Hachasidut" book, scanning everything in the book, top to botom. Nothing underlined. I went to my dad and he said, "Did I make it up?!" Apparenly, he had. It was kinda disappointing, but I've long since forgiven him.

Jacob

I've been teaching law for fourteen years as practitioner-lecturer, in some of the best law schools in Canada and Continental Europe.  As others have attested, it is perfectly normal practice for students and faculty to refer to lecturers and tenured professors alike as "Professor".  It is equally well understood that the shorthand for what I do, whether I am on academic premises or among lay persons, is to be a "law prof".  If in some of the most hidebound, conservative and title-conscious universities in France and Switzerland one can be a "prof" without being tenured, I suspect that Mr. Obama would not be stretching the truth in referring to himself, for shorthand purposes, as a law prof.

To use this as a means of attacking him smacks of desperation and of an ignrance that (at least this latter) ill becomes Mrs. Clinton.  To make a snarky comment on that issue in these pages ... well, let's just say someone who's spent a single semester in University or College would not make such a comment except out of pettiness.  

Blackton: Still down south?  If so, you would surely know that some "parks" are considerably more dangerous than some minefields :-).

Rhub: Indeed - there are fibs and then there are fibs.  When I retell the story of running away from our apartment in Tehran during the revolution or the blackouts during the War, I embellish a little - usually for comic effect. (My mom did have her curlers on but was not wearing a beauty mask when we fled; I never got stuck in the elevator because we never had electricity at night to take the elevator to begin with; etc.) But then if I started talking about how I fled over the mountains on foot and got arrested and sent back and fled again and went into hiding for four months ... well, that all happened.  Just no to me, but my cousin and uncle and best friend ....  It seems to me that Mrs. Clinton's stories are not embellishments of the first kind, but fibs of the second kind.  Sad.

Of course, Marty never told a tall tale!

Come on people, lighten up, didn't anyone here read The Big Bear of Arkansas?

Obama was offered a full professorship at the University of Chicago Law School, but didn't take it because of his political career.  In any event, "professor" is an acceptable generic term for what he did there.  It wasn't as though he was an occasional guest lecturer or something.

Just to offer my own "parents story": When I was growing up every time we drove past a statue of a man in a little grassy plot at an intersection, my father would say: "That's Uncle Louie's statue." As I got older and got my driver's license I would occasionally drive by the statue and I would always think: "That's Uncle Louie's statue." I never thought about how a statue in the most expensive(and waspy) section of our town could have been funded by, dedicated to, or modeled after Uncle Louie, who was a working-class Kosher butcher in the basement of the old Fanuiel Hall. But now I understand: Just my late dad's idea of humor.

Listening everyday to the conference call spin by her Three Stooges, Howie(Larry), Phil(Curly), and Mark(Moe), I find her simply crassly self-serving and an absolute relativist regarding truth and dignity. Hillary is not known for her humor or her graciousness.

Jackson. I have to say that I am a little surprised by the extent of your generosity. Not that I misunderstand your rooting interest. I, too, am sympathetic to certain aspects of your reasons and rationale for supporting Hillary Clinton. But really.... this story goes beyond tall tale. The only way I get to tall tale is if she is somewhat playfully joking. Otherwise, as I suspect, it means something else. None of which is flattering.

You're a fairly level headed guy. You have a soft spot here that I can't square up with. Correct me if I'm wrong but I suspect that you would be much less open to the 'harmless exaggeration' were it uttered by Obama.

Check this out, great piece of parody on Hillary's fabulist imaginings of her life and times in the combat zone, and at least in her own mind, unquestioned courage under fire. Could use a little bit of editing, but otherwise fabulous.

The War Journals of Hillary Clinton, Vol. 1

www.dailykos.com/.../485014

["There!" Sinbad shouted. "The convoy!"

I wrenched my gaze in the direction he was pointing. The boom of the grenade registered only faintly, suddenly unimportant. Thirty yards dead ahead was the real target: the armored convoy, offering safety, shelter, survival. If we could reach it.

"Follow me!" Sinbad roared, levering himself to his feet. As I prepared to follow, a high-pitched whine arrowed across my eardrums and warm, sticky rain splashed my face.

I forced myself to look, already knowing what I would see. The big man lay there, crumpled, the left side of his head a nightmare maze of blood, brains and tight curls of yellowish-orange hair.

Time to mourn later. Survive.

I juked to my left, darting and weaving, somehow making it to Sheryl's position. Her eyes were wide, shock and fear clouding their emerald depths. "Is he-"

"Gone," I snapped. "We have to move. Now."]

"Correct me if I'm wrong but I suspect that you would be much less open to the 'harmless exaggeration' were it uttered by Obama."

You are wrong, Boxo. If Obama made some harmless exaggerations I would cheer him on.

However, when he exaggerates the extent of his desire for a new politics, while associating with the likes of Rezko and Wright, then his exaggerations are anything but harmless.

In any case, most Obama supporters support him because he is not Hillary, like MP or because they know nothing about political history as some writers here, and elsewhere show. You can see this in articles that compare Obama to people like Robert Kennedy.

Of the two candidates Hillary is much more like Robert Kennedy (in the good and bad senses) than Obama could ever hope to be.

Jackson: "In an case, most Obama supporters support him because he is not Hillary"

Come on, buddy.  Don't analyze why we like him.  Before the campaign started in full, I was giddy about having so many good candidates.   Obama's appeal had nothing to do with Hillary, who, at that time, I liked- or at least thought would have made a good President.   Now, I can't stomach the secrecy, the lies, the strident arrogance.   But that had nothing to do with my initial support for Obama.

And the Bosnia thing is not a harmless exaggeration.  One of the main planks of her campaign is her FP experience, and this- and Northern Ireland- are what she uses to support it.   Firstly, it is insane.  Lots of journalists braved bullets in Bosnia; so, for that matter, did Arkan.  Would you want Hitchens as POTUS?  So dodging sniper bullets, even if true, is not a good argument, and shows the shallowness of her "experience" (speaking of, what about the Northern Ireland thing?  Was that a harmless exaggeration, as well?  And please answer something pro-Hillary; don't just pivot and say "but Obama did this").  

Leaving aside the inanity of how landing on a dangerous tarmac qualifies as FP experience, the lie itself drives me bonkers.  Do we want another President who is willing to be clinically dishonest anytime it hurts them.  McCain at least admits his flaws, all the time, and Barack is a thoughtful, insightful individual (even if at times it manifests itself as a fascination with his own story).  Do we really want another President like that?

Also: Geoff Graham- great stuff.  And, icasur, please know that there is no need to exaggerate for us stories of fleeing during the Revolution.  At least not to me.  The stories are amazing and jaw-dropping enough.  

Jackson:

Well alright then. I'll take your response at face value and accept your democratic due diligence and hypothetical attributions.

Personally I think that Hillary's tall tale, even in it's harmless characterization by your lights, was a critical mistake on her part. Her already slim chances have been considerably diminished but her little story. I also think that it reveals a significant character flaw which is indeed relevant to considering her for president. Certainly more consequential than a scream or funky tank commander helmet.

Like the Monk says, I could be wrong now. But I don't think so. It's a jungle out there. It's a jungle out there.

that would be, " considerably damaged BY her little story."

I see the Obama-nites are out in force.

boneill said:  “Come on, buddy.  Don't analyze why we like him.  Before the campaign started in full, I was giddy about having so many good candidates.   Obama's appeal had nothing to do with Hillary, who, at that time, I liked- or at least thought would have made a good President.   Now, I can't stomach the secrecy, the lies, the strident arrogance.   But that had nothing to do with my initial support for Obama.”

That’s true for you, but not for Marty and myriad others.

“Do we want another President who is willing to be clinically dishonest anytime it hurts them.  McCain at least admits his flaws, all the time, and Barack is a thoughtful, insightful individual (even if at times it manifests itself as a fascination with his own story).”

Yes, McCain is a good man.

Though I noticed that all the positive things you have to say about Obama are couched in generalities. That is because the man is a blank slate and people see in him what they want to see.  

It really comes down to he is not Hillary, doesn’t it?

boxofrox said: “Personally I think that Hillary's tall tale, even in it's harmless characterization by your lights, was a critical mistake on her part. Her already slim chances have been considerably diminished but her little story. I also think that it reveals a significant character flaw which is indeed relevant to considering her for president. Certainly more consequential than a scream or funky tank commander helmet.”

Come on Boxo, candidates and Presidents, good and bad, exaggerate all the time. Hillary’s exaggeration was stupid because she should have known that her tall tale would be checked on by her enemies.

From my perspective a more hilarious exaggeration was when she said that she was named after Sir Edmund Hillary even though he made his famous climb after she had been born.  She told the story while she wasn’t running for anything.

She clearly likes to aggrandize herself in these stories and that’s a flaw I agree, but it’s the kind of flaw that appears in classical comedy under the name of   Miles Gloriosus (boastful soldier).  Obama’s flaw’s are potentially the stuff of tragedy.

Boneill: the only "need" for exaggeration, at least for me, is for comic effect (the only way I can remember staring down the barrel of a tank gun without breaking into a sweat is by making light of that episode, and indeed the whole five year nightmare).  I don't think, though, that having literally dodged bullets and escaped bombings, and having survived a revolution, a war and a civil war would qualify me for the position of POTUS on FP grounds.

jackson, Hillary's lies about Tuzla were not a tactically "stupid exaggeration." It's OK for a candidate to get family stories wrong in ways that make one's family sound cooler than it is -- everyone's family has those stores, and we're not to be held responsible as individuals for fact-checking every story our parents told. If your dad told you you were named after Edmund Hillary, or your mom says she met your dad at an event "like Selma" (Obama's actual phrasing), nothing wrong with telling the story as an adult.

But claiming that stuff happened to you as an adult that didn't happen to you, that you know you didn't experience, that's not a tall tale, that's not an exaggeration, that's a lie. (How can it be an exaggeration? There was zero sniper fire at the airport. A thousand times zero bullets is still zero bullets. "Exaggerate" would be turning one sniper event into a hail of hostile fire.) And it's not a unique lie; Hillary lies about important events in her public life as well. Her explanation of her vote on Iraq, for example, can only be true if we assume that she is illiterate. If she's literate -- if she has an eighth-grade ability to read the English language -- then her story about why she voted for the war resolution _cannot_ be true, and if it's not true, it must be false, and yet Hillary tells that lie all the time. She narrowly avoided perjury indictments on at least two occasions during her husband's presidency. There may be good reasons to vote for Hillary -- maybe her supporters like the Patriot Act or hate the First Amendment -- but the notion that she's even nearly as honest as an average politician ain't one of them. She's a deeply dishonest person who will look straight at you, tell you a lie, and then laugh about it -- literally, watch her talking about Tuzla -- just like George W. Bush.

The University of Chicago has issued a press release clearing that up.  It's longish and quite etailed, but the essence of it is that at the University of Chicago Law School Obama was a Senior Lecturer in Constitutional Law.  At the University of Chicago Law School, Senior Lecturers are regarded as equivalent to and addressed as "Professor."  Probably comparable to "visiting " or "adjunct" professors.  They are without tenure because they are made up of people whose first job is elsewhere -- in Obama's case, as a senator.  For more on this and the discussion behind it, listen to the Friday a.m. Diane Rehm show, first hour, discussion.  The press release is read there in its entirety.  

icarusr said: "I don't think, though, that having literally dodged bullets and escaped bombings, and having survived a revolution, a war and a civil war would qualify me for the position of POTUS on FP grounds."

It's a good thing, then, that you aren't running for POTUS, isn't it?

More:  The UofC press release reads as follows:

"The Law School has received many media requests about Barack Obama, especially about his status as "Senior Lecturer." From 1992 until his election to the U.S. Senate in 2004, Barack Obama served as a professor in the Law School. He was a Lecturer from 1992 to 1996. He was a Senior Lecturer from 1996 to 2004, during which time he taught three courses per year. Senior Lecturers are considered to be members of the Law School faculty and are regarded as professors, although not full-time or tenure-track. The title of Senior Lecturer is distinct from the title of Lecturer, which signifies adjunct status. Like Obama, each of the Law School's Senior Lecturers have high-demand careers in politics or public service, which prevent full-time teaching. Several times during his 12 years as a professor in the Law School, Obama was invited to join the faculty in a full-time tenure-track position, but he declined."

Here is one issue pertaining to Obama which is also trivial.

Who cares if he calls himself a Professor or not.

Different universities have different standards on who gets called   a Professor and who is merely a lecturer. This is especially true of adjunct faculty?

Rhubarbs  I think we have flogged this horse to death.

Supporters of Obama will have different view of this issue than I do.

Let's move on.

Jackson. You could be right. She may survive the democratic party vetting. I don't know. I DO strongly suspect that this kind of a lie wouldn't survive a republican primary. There are certain things which all politicians are allowed to 'color' according to there disposition. ' Under fire' or just the threat is not one of them. Borrowed bravery and fraudulent medals of honor are not met with understanding and sympathy.

Like I say, you may be right. But inasmuch that Dems are fond of attributing Bush's Air National Guard service as a badge of cowardice it creates a larger distance by which they must go in order to accept Hillary's fancies especially in contrast to McCain and his record.

Imagine Hillary's spechifying voice over with the tarmac conversation and flower exchange video. Then a simple cut to McCain in uniform. If I were a tried and true Dem I would be a little more than bemused.

Fair enough, jackson -- we'll just have to agree to disagree about whether lying is wrong.

I'm also against cheating, littering, stealing, and the designated hitter. Is any common ground possible between Obama and Hillary supporters?

"Is any common ground possible between Obama and Hillary supporters?"

Not any more, not given the evil schoolmarms recent actions, and the actions of her droogs.

I think Rhubarbs is right on this.  

The awful truth is that many of us identified Clinton with Bush from the get-go.  The similarities -- entitlement, charm+prevarication, arrogance, anger, political machinery, ruthless advisers -- are more than this citizen could accept for yet another eight-year stretch.  Choice between past and future. Only scaredy-cats cling to the past.

Jacksondyer...so she is not a serial or a congenital liar..."So" she is just a misspeaker and we are all exaggerators to make such a fuss.  For the sake of argument let's grant you that.  Occasionally, she is allowed to be human just like the rest of us... after all it is just once in 12 years that she has misspoken, so cut her some slack please...Right you are.

BUT how about judgment once again?  Poor I mean.  How about a tin ear once again?

And do please look again at her face and manner as she is telling her big fish story.  there is something so... what shall I say... bonkers...

Have any of you seen the postings of the Willie Wonkers movie where the little girl screams that she wants the golden egg interspersed with clips of Hillary making various statements.. it is worth a good laugh too.  It's on YouTube and some of the postings on the DailyKos

boxofrox said:  "Jackson. You could be right. She may survive the democratic party vetting. I don't know. I DO strongly suspect that this kind of a lie wouldn't survive a republican primary."

Are you joking? Bush survied his lying in 00 and before him there was Nixon (I am not a thief) and many others.

As for the Democrats, BIll Clinton survived the primaries and before him there were.......

Rhubarbs, go stick Obama posters on trees, will you. Sheeeeeeeeeeesh.  You are a bore!

Annabella2, you too, mi bella, Annabella?

It's probably too late to jump back in here, but thanks for the compliments on my previous humor. If Hillary keeps floating those softballs over the plate (though I wish she wouldn't - she still may be our last best hope to make sure that Justice Stevens isn't replaced by Sean Hannity, so I'd be happy if she stopped shooting herself and my party in the foot), I'll be glad to smack a few. Another thing that occurred to me, maybe more sad than funny, is that even if Hillary's story and its premise were true, she would be less qualified to be commander-in-chief than Bob Hope. I bet even Joey Heatherton risked her life to visit war zones more often than Hillary has.  

jackson. I never had you for an apples to oranges kind of guy.

What matters to me most about the Hillary in Bosnia lie is that it's killing her.  I'm back in Paris for a while and most everyone here seems to know of it and think she has made herself ridiculous.  Once you're a laughingstock, it's over.

I think I could support Joey Heatherton over Hillary.  Loved the boots.

I really hope the Tuzla-gate will die down quickly enough on TNR that I am able to avoid having to post this more than once.

To all those who harangue Hillary over her Bosnia story - in 1996, Tuzla was a terribly dangerous place to be. If there was no sniper fire when she landed, there could just as well have been and she is lucky to have avoided it. Take it from someone that has grown up in Croatia, a neighboring state, in a city that was heavily bombed and is damn near Tuzla. As a war survivor myself, I can honestly say I would not have wanted to be the person visiting that section of Bosnia in that particular time period. Her trip was risky in and of itself, regardless of whether she ended up being greeted with sniper fire or a little girl eager to read her a poem.

Togo West, military general in charge of American forces stationed in Bosnia at a time, said it best when he pointed out that he considered this whole affair trivial and that her chief purpose, which was to lend support to the troops and assist with the crisis, was well accomplished. Thus, I would strongly urge all who continue to wallow in this story to please cease and find something more intelligent to badger Hillary about.

Not a chance, jkolic  It works too well.  Even if everything you say is true, it does not justify Hillary inventing an entire episode to make herself look more important than she was.  Fits right in with her fib about helping to make peace in Northern Ireland.   And what the hell was Chelsea doing there?  You can be damned sure that I wouldn't be taking my kids along for photo-ops in an active war zone, or for any other reason, even if I were going there to do something important.  Which strongly suggests that your characterization of Tuzla at that time is wrong.

Either way, Hillary is a liar who goes to absurd lengths to inflate her resume.  That's not my idea of tested, vetted, or ready day one.  Hillary has NOT crossed the commander in chief threshold, whatever in god's name that is.

Bye, bye Hill.  It's been great to know you.

i am not quite sure what to tell you, roid. It baffles me somewhat to comprehend which part of my post is it that you seem to disbelieve - the fact that I grew up where I say I did, the fact that I lived there in the nineties, or the fact that in 1996 Tuzla was still a war zone. (I do hope it is the last statement you are skeptical of). Since there really is not a way for us to jump into a time machine to witness Tuzla as it was at the time, I suppose you and I will have to agree to disagree.

You say you woud not have taken your children to a war zone for photo-ops. I would not either. Frankly, I was not even aware of the fact that Hillary had Chelsea come along. If she really did, she must have done so believing all the security arranged for their visit would assure their safety. Either way, I would not characterize it as a smart decision. Nonetheless, my characterization of Tuzla is not wrong. Then again, perhaps you and I have different definitions of what constitutes danger.