Wednesday, October 1, 2014

Obama's Speeches...when the last line tells it all!

by Norman E. Hooben
Not a whole lot of folks bother to analyze Barack Hussein Obama’s speeches; they either dismiss them or eat them right up.  And with that said we should be careful of what choice we make.
Back in 2008 Charlotte Higgins wrote a column for the Guardian and attempted to compare Obama with the historically great orator, Marcus Tullius Cicero…Cicero for short.  Higgins writes:

“More than once, the adjective that has been deployed to describe Obama's oratorical skill is "Ciceronian". Cicero, the outstanding Roman politician of the late republic, was certainly the greatest orator of his time, and one of the greatest in history. A fierce defender of the republican constitution, his criticism of Mark Antony got him murdered in 43BC.
During the Roman republic (and in ancient Athens) politics was oratory. In Athens, questions such as whether or not to declare war on an enemy state were decided by the entire electorate (or however many bothered to turn up) in open debate. Oratory was the supreme political skill, on whose mastery power depended. Unsurprisingly, then, oratory was highly organised and rigorously analyzed. The Greeks and Romans, in short, knew all the rhetorical tricks, and they put a name to most of them.
It turns out that Obama knows them, too. One of the best known of Cicero's techniques is his use of series of three to emphasize points: the tricolon. (The most enduring example of a Latin tricolon is not Cicero's, but Caesar's "Veni, vidi, vici" - I came, I saw, I conquered.) Obama uses tricola freely. …”

Personally I don’t like the comparison of someone as notable as Cicero with a previously unknown Community Organizer who obviously is making inroads on his promise to fundamentally change America.  I will concede to Higgins’ observation that his successes are due to the use of the tricolon, a term that is not used too frequently.  That is unless you are a grammar and composition expert.

We find such an expert over at About.com  by the name of Richard Nordquist who also describes Obama’s speeches as ‘tricolon’.  Nordquist expresses that notion here:

Have you ever wondered how Barack Obama does it?

I mean, how he uses words--for the most part simple words--to inspire a crowd the way he did in Chicago's Grant Park on the night he was elected president in November 2008?
Barack Obama's secret--or one part of it, at least--is the magic number three. In rhetorical terms, that's a tricolon: a series of three parallel words, phrases, or clauses.  Words such as, "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."  Phrases such as, "government of the people, by the people, for the people."  Obama's victory speech was teeming with tricolons--as indicated in this excerpt:
“If there is anyone out there [1] who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible; [2] who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time; [3] who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.”
 
Nordquist uses altogether too many excerpts to get his point across (I condensed it to the one above).  But he also reverts to the comparison with Cicero…he summarizes his essay with:
About 2,000 years ago, Cicero taught us that what makes or breaks a speech is effective delivery, which includes the qualities of dignity and grace:
All these parts of oratory succeed according as they are delivered. Delivery . . . has the sole and supreme power in oratory; without it, a speaker of the highest mental capacity can be held in no esteem; while one of moderate abilities, with this qualification, may surpass even those of the highest talent.
(De Oratore)
So to the list of Obama's persuasive skills add standing tall, speaking forcefully, and exuding confidence.
 
Again, I wholeheartedly disagree with any such comparison when the above authors do not mention Obama’s Alinskyisms…to say one thing but do another.  And you don’t have to be an expert at anything to notice Obama’s hypocrisy (See: What is an Alinskyism?).  So for all those who ate up Obama’s speeches (I warned you above), be careful what you swallow…  We all know what comes out of a colon!
_____________________________________
______________________
__________
Tricolon
Definition: A rhetorical termfor a series of three parallelwords, phrases, or clauses; Plural: tricolons or tricola. Adjective: tricolonic

Note: Obama is also an expert in the use of sophistry: The use of reasoning or arguments that sound correct but are actually false.  Personally, I think it's just a fancy word for lying!
____________________
 
Bonus Videos...fly with an eagle!



Tuesday, September 30, 2014

Obama versus Netanyahu

Courtesy of Storm'n Norm'n
The following from the Doug Ross Journal
COMMANDO VS. COMMUNITY ORGANIZER
Netanyahu Slams "Brazen Lies" Told by Obama and Abbas
By Anne Bayefsky
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu chose not to let President Obama's bold allegation that Israelis were not interested in peace go unanswered in his speech Monday at the UN. "Brazen lies spoken from this very podium against my country" is how Netanyahu described the remarks of previous speakers, when he addressed the U.N. General Assembly. Just five days earlier, President Obama had made a shocking assertion in his role as president while speaking on the world stage. He claimed that there were "too many Israelis ready to abandon the hard work of peace." Obama scolded: "that's something worthy of reflection within Israel. 
Not only did President Obama not include Palestinians in this demeaning and defamatory slur, he proceeded to equate "rockets fired at innocent Israelis" with "Palestinian children taken from us in Gaza." Not "taken from us" by Hamas who used them as human fodder in their attempted annihilation of Israel. But apparently "taken from us" by those Israelis not interested in peace.

No Israeli Prime Minister could allow such an attack to go unanswered. And so Netanyahu began his remarks by daring President Obama to distinguish between his battle against ISIS and Israel's battle with Hamas.
Said Netanyahu: "the people of Israel pray for peace, but our hopes and the world's hopes for peace are in danger because everywhere we look militant Islam in on the march."

 
The stark contrast between the two world leaders also could not have been more clear on the subject of Iran.

President Obama spent five sentences of his 39-minute UN address on Iran, telling the world "my message to Iran's leaders...We can reach a solution that meets your energy needs while assuring the world that your program is peaceful."
Another brazen lie, since no one believes that Iran's nuclear program is peaceful or has anything to do with its energy needs, which can be met into the next century by its natural resources.
Netanyahu instead pointed – yet again – to the terrifying threat of the acquisition of the world's most dangerous weapon by the world's most dangerous country and the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism.
He challenged the president, and the global community, "to disarm ISIS but leave Iran with the bomb would be to win the battle but lose the war."
Sitting stone-faced in her seat, was the woman holding the bag on Obama's obsequious Iran policy, America's ambassador to the UN: Samantha Power.
Israeli Prime Minister's message Monday came as Palestinian leaders are vying to remain the U.N.'s favorite victim amidst the headless human carcasses now piling up in Iraq, Syria, the United Kingdom, Algeria, and the United States.
No doubt, Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas has something to worry about. It's a tough sell to differentiate the Hamas partner in his unity government – an organization dedicated to the kidnapping, murder and execution of both Israelis and Palestinians en route to Islamic domination – from ISIS, Al Nusra, Al Qaeda and company.
So Israel's "peace partner" evidently decided the way forward was not to eschew Islamic fanaticism but to embrace it.
In one of the most vitriolic speeches ever delivered by a Palestinian leader at the U.N., Abbas accused Israel on Friday, September 26 of "genocide," of practicing "an abhorrent form of apartheid," and of "state terrorism." He analogized Israelis to Nazis with Palestinians living in "ghettos" and claimed the rise of ISIS was Israel's fault since Israel was a "source of terrorism" and a "breeding ground for incitement..."
Netanyahu called the assertions something derived from "the moral universe" of "a man who wrote a dissertation of lies about the Holocaust and who insists on a Palestine free of Jews."

Unfortunately, plain talk at the U.N. is as unwelcome as it is unusual.

Even more unfortunate is a president of the United States who sounds warmer when talking about Iran than about Israel.
______________________________
 
“A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within.  An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly.  But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself.  For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men.  He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist.  A murderer is less to fear.” ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero

In case you haven't noticed... IT'S AUTUMN !!!

Photos by Norm
Location Tobey Farm
Rte 6A Dennis, MA
Sept 30, 2014


Cell Phone Mania ...and the end of the world

Courtesy of Storm'n Norm'n














Watch football coach Mike Leach predict end of the world ~ from Greenville OnLine
Mike Leach, head coach of Washington State University's football team, predicts that the human race will end because of technology.  ↓ ↓ ↓