Posted on 10/13/2015 8:56:21 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
President Obama lamented the rancorous, divided state of U.S. politics in a wide-ranging interview with Pulitzer Prize-winning author Marilynne Robinson.
In the unusual discussion, Obama revealed some of his longstanding frustrations with politics while asking the Iowa author questions about her family, her Christian faith and writings.
“How do you reconcile the idea of faith being really important to you and you caring a lot about taking faith seriously with the fact that, at least in our democracy and our civic discourse, it seems as if folks who take religion the most seriously sometimes are also those who are suspicious of those not like them?” Obama asked during the interview, which was published Monday in the New York Review of Books. Robinson replied that those “turning in on themselves — and God knows, arming themselves” against an “imagined other,” are not “taking their Christianity seriously.”
Obama’s comments about religion’s role in America have often irked his opponents. Throughout his presidency, a vocal group of Obama critics have questioned his Christian faith.
Ahead of Pope Francis’s recent visit to the White House, Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee suggested that Obama “pretends to be” Christian while blocking others from practicing their faith.
Obama said that America’s greatness stems from a sense of “nagging dissatisfaction” that spurred settlers to move West, helped astronauts land on the moon and inspired the creation of the Internet.
But he said Americans often take those achievements for granted, a mindset that fuels deep skepticism of government.
“Whenever I hear people saying that our problems would be solved without government, I always want to tell them you need to go to some other countries where there really is no government, where the roads are never repaired ... or kids don’t have access to basic primary education,” he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at thehill.com ...
He reminds me of a truck stop restroom, full of shiite and nobody with the guts to go in and flush it.
Clown Prince nobama is truly a loser.
I know I'm not the only person who wonders how a people who in everyday life are for all practical purposes Fundamentalist Protestants can vote for, and be represented by, only those with the most radical viewpoint on all issues across the board?
Don't forget - Obama is the Big Choomer
Obama and His Pot-Smoking 'Choom Gang'
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/05/obama-and-his-pot-smoking-choom-gang/Unlike Bill Clinton, Barack Obama never tried to say he didn't inhale.
In his 1995 memoir "Dreams of My Father," Obama writes about smoking pot almost like Dr. Seuss wrote about eating green eggs and ham. As a high school kid, Obama wrote, he would smoke "in a white classmate's sparkling new van," he would smoke "in the dorm room of some brother" and he would smoke "on the beach with a couple of Hawaiian kids."
He would smoke it here and there. He would smoke it anywhere.
Now a soon-to-be published biography by David Maraniss entitled "Barack Obama: The Story" gives more detail on Obama's pot-smoking days, complete with testimonials from young Barry Obama's high school buddies, a group that went by the name "the Choom Gang." Choom was slang for smoking marijuana.
Maraniss portrays the teenage Obama as not just a pot smoker, but a pot-smoking innovator.
"As a member of the Choom Gang," Maraniss writes, "Barry Obama was known for starting a few pot-smoking trends."
The first Obama-inspired trend: "Total Absorption" or "TA".
"TA was the opposite of Bill Clinton's claim that as a Rhodes scholar at Oxford he smoked dope but never inhaled," explains Maraniss. Here's how it worked: If you exhaled prematurely when you were with the Choom Gang, "you were assessed a penalty and your turn was skipped the next time the joint came around."
As one of Obama's old high school buddies tells Maraniss: "Wasting good bud smoke was not tolerated."
Another Obama innovation: "Roof Hits."
"When they were chooming in a car all the windows had to be rolled up so no smoke blew out and went to waste; when the pot was gone, they tilted their heads back and sucked in the last bit of smoke from the ceiling."
Maraniss also says Obama was known for his "Interceptions": "When a joint was making the rounds, he often elbowed his way in, out of turn, shouted 'Intercepted!,' and took an extra hit."
Obama himself managed to be a pretty good student despite all the pot smoking and unconventional study habits.
"He told his Choom Gang mates that the trick was if you put the textbook under your pillow the night before you would perform better on an exam," Maraniss writes. No way, dude!
Obama's pal Mark Bendix had a Volkswagen microbus known as "the Choomwagon." They would often drive up Honolulu's Mount Tantalus where they parked "turned up their stereos playing Aerosmith, Blue Oyster Cult and Stevie Wonder, lit up some 'sweet-sticky Hawaiian buds' and washed it down with 'green bottled beer' (the Choom Gang preferred Heineken, Becks, and St. Pauli Girl). No shouting, no violence, no fights; they even cleaned up their beer bottles."
Of course, smoking, drinking and driving on mountain roads could also be a little dangerous. Especially the night they tried drag racing.
The race to the top of Mount Tantalus pitted the "Choomwagon" against another friend's Toyota. Obama was in the Toyota. The Choomwagon made it to the top first. When the other car didn't show up, those in the Choomwagon drove back down to find them. Here's how Maraniss describes what happened next:
"On the way down, they saw a figure who appeared to be staggering up the road. It was Barry Obama. What was going on? As they drew closer, they noticed that he was laughing so hard he could barely stand up."
His friend had rolled the car. Fortunately, nobody was hurt. And, amazingly, they avoided trouble by leaving the driver alone to deal with the police by claiming it was just an unfortunate "mishap."
Maraniss concludes his chapter on Obama's high school years by looking at a note Obama had written in his high school yearbook in a section reserved for students to give a line or two giving thanks to those who helped along the way.
Obama had written this: "Thanks Tut [his grandmother], Gramps, Choom Gang, and Ray for all the good times."
Maraniss notes: "Ray was the older guy who hung around the Choom Gang, selling them pot. A hippie drug dealer made his acknowledgements; his mother did not."
The White House told ABC News that it has no comment.
I know he smoked it in a box
but did he ever smoke it with a fox?
Sinclair says he smoked crack rocks
While Larry puffed on Barry’s ....
Obama is a Christian that loves America...
...
snirk...
smmcsnnch...
guggghr...
...
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Sox.
Too bad that meme wasn’t done correctly.
Ah, so he's trying to make America great again by nagging and spreading discontent?
Whenever I hear people saying that our problems would be solved with government, I always want to tell them you need to go to Detroit, Chitcago or Filthydelphia.
The sooner this mentally diseased POS leaves the better it will be for all Americans and our allies.
I don’t understand why everyone can’t see he’s as bonkers as they come and he is only steps away from pushing THE button at all times.
Total nut case.
Then, if there was an honest media, you’d have the obvious follow-up “So, would you then consider yourself not serious about religion?”
If he says “yes”, then he’ll piss off A LOT of people and if he says “no”, he will put himself in the category that is suspicious of others.
“nagging dissatisfaction” led to great achievements?
Therein lies the problem. He has such a distorted view of the American psyche. He simply can’t abide the exceptional optimism of the American people.
It is just one more silly thing from the lips of OBama. His unscripted observations almost always sound as if they came from a teenager. I that his heavy marijuana use from an early age stunted both his emotional and cognitive development. It is always funny to me that marijuana users tend to state the obvious like it is some type of revelation. People are almost always at least a little suspicious of others who are different from them. That is just human nature.
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