The World As It Wasn’t

WFB ^ | 1 June 2018 | Matthew Continettii

[Rummyfan]

Maybe you can help me out. I'm puzzling over a line in a New York Times story on The World As It Is, the forthcoming memoir from Barack Obama's deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes. The article, by Peter Baker, is about the parts of Rhodes's book that deal with Donald Trump's surprise victory over Hillary Clinton.

"In the weeks after Mr. Trump's election," Baker reports, "Mr. Obama went through multiple emotional stages," including flashes of "anger," "rare self-doubt," and taking "the long view." Do not think, however, that during the final weeks of his presidency Barack Obama was withdrawn or more self-obsessed than usual. People needed him. The day after the election, Baker continues, "Mr. Obama focused on cheering up his despondent staff."

For example—and here is the line that confuses me—"he sent a message to Mr. Rhodes saying, ‘There are more stars in the sky than grains of sand on the earth.'"

Say what? How does a dimly remembered Carl Sagan quote relate to 2016? Was Obama speaking in code? Was this an example of him taking the "long view"—implying that lol nothing matters because we are all cosmic dust adrift in the void? Was he suggesting the planet might be saved from Trump by an alien invasion? It sounds like the message you'd find inside an especially pretentious fortune cookie.

[Rummyfan]

[Rummyfan]

The passages of The World As It Is that Baker quotes in his piece reinforce the widespread impression of our forty-fourth president as an aloof, smug, vainglorious chief executive totally divorced from political reality.

He was! And is, although thankfully he is no longer the chief executive of anything.

[laplata]

Actually Obama was rejected as much as Hillary was in 2016.

I probably didn’t phrase that too well but that’s how I see it.

[Rummyfan]

It's not your fault, Mr. President. You didn't push too far. All you did was troll Donald Trump into running for president in the first place, stand by while Ferguson and Baltimore rioted and burned, give Iran billions in exchange for empty promises, allow Russia to establish a beachhead in the Middle East for the first time in half a century, browbeat Israel at every opportunity, ram through Obamacare after Scott Brown's election in Massachusetts, preside over the mass migration of children across the southern border in 2014, expand the DACA amnesty despite saying 22 times you lacked authority to do so, use the permanent structure of government to devastate the Appalachian economy, convince half of America that liberals were ready to take their guns (this wasn't hard to do), have your Education Department issue orders that led to the campus-assault craze and the deterioration of classroom discipline and that, months before a presidential election, mandated trans-bathrooms in schools, have your Justice Department preside over a sloppy (I'm being charitable) investigation into Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server that included, at one point, your attorney general secretly meeting with the husband of the subject of the investigation on an airport tarmac, muscle out Joe Biden, who might have won, from the race, and hand the party back to the less-likable half of America's most polarizing and corrupt political couple. Not to mention the eight years of lecturing. Oh, the lecturing.

A good summary!

[Eric in the Ozarks]

Reads OK to me.

[miss marmelstein]

And he left all his work (bad as it was) to Harry Reid. Lazy.

[laplata]

Thanks.

[Louis Foxwell]

On top of everything else, there are not more stars in the sky than grains of sand on the beach. They are equivalent, as is everything in the universe.

[ladyL]

For example—and here is the line that confuses me—”he sent a message to Mr. Rhodes saying, ‘There are more stars in the sky than grains of sand on the earth.’”

That phrase is used in Genesis when on four occasions Yahweh spoke to Abram, then used once to Isaac, and then three times to Jacob. The eternal promise Yahweh made to these men on EIGHT times total that their descendants would be uncountable, as many as the stars in the heavens and the sand on the sea side. The other two factors of the eternal covenant/Promise was that the land, Eretz Israel would be theirs eternally and that Yahweh would be their God forever.
Obama being a muslim might have associated the “stars” with the Ishmaelites, Abraham’s bastard child, later to become the Arabs and the “sand” as being the Israelites.
Just a thought...

[Spok]

Liberals never respond well when the real world invades their safe place fantasy bubbles. Obama needs a cry room.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

Good summary, indeed. I think it was eight long years of “hectoring,”not “lecturing.”

[onedoug]

The largest fraud ever perpetrated against the United States.

[Louis Foxwell]

While I am on the subject, natural law cannot be drawn from nature. Existence is neither moral nor is it immoral. Morality comes from God, the Creator, and not from His creation or the critters of his field.

[okie 54]

a Turd would have been a better president than the Kenyan

[Fantasywriter]

‘It sounds like the message you’d find inside an especially pretentious fortune cookie.’

Hilarious! Describes the depth of Obama’s intellect to a T.

[lurk]

The attention-getter in the book is Mr Hussein axing if he wasn’t 20 years too early.

That’s chilling. A tip that they want change over time. A revelation of the end game of collectivism, headed toward an eventual collective state.

[originalbuckeye]

I think the former Narcissist-in-Chief was suggesting that Trump’s election was a temporary setback. He is a BELIEVER in wacko Left politics. The Dems/Socialists are good at incrementalism. They will move forward again, when they have the advantage.

[PGalt]

“Maybe you can help me out.”

Figure it out, Matt. Good luck.

https://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/fashion/weddings/anne-kristol-matthew-continetti-weddings.html

[BenLurkin]

Hussein is a legend in his own mind.

[oxcart]

I guess the WhaaaaaaaaaBulance never showed up for his Ego.