[coldtea]

Actually all of these sound like excellent gestures.

Not playing to BS patriotism and phony sentiment by having his hands "together and below his belt"? Daring to say "my muslim faith" (haven't heard of that, so I kinda doubt it, but still). Bowing in respect to heads of other nations, instead of playing the "greatest nation on earth"?

All of these all excellent.

It's all the OTHER stuff that's bad about what he did.

[graycat]

Nearly universally in the US, hand over heart during the playing of the US National Anthem is a biggie. A lot of highly patriotic US citizens could get all wound up about that. Each of Hillary and Richardson put their hand over their heart. It's a free country, so you are welcome to your opinion, but what Obama did would be telling to a huge fraction of US citizens and, thus, some telling background for someone asking the question I was responding to. Or, whatever you think about hand over heart, what Obama did correlates with some other things he did that were equally shocking to a lot of people, and that is, net, my point, independent of my opinion.

For the bowing, the Chinese example is at

http://arabiangazette.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Obama-B...

and I have links and personal copies of the other three. Just now I'm not going to the trouble to check if the other three URLs are current.

To a huge fraction of US citizens, bowing to a foreign leader is a biggie and part of why it was commonly said that Obama went on an "apology tour". Some people will conclude that he deliberately insulted the US in a way disloyal to the US.

Playing "greatest nation on earth" is irrelevant: No significant nation expects leaders of other nations to bow. Bowing is wildly inappropriate.

"My Muslim faith":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMUgNg7aD8M

Some people will look at that clip and conclude that Obama just misspoke or was repeating something McCain didn't say but might have, etc. Take it as you wish.

Some people are disappointed in Obama, and some of what I wrote is some of why they had what should have been for such people good advanced information and warning. There was plenty of warning -- we knew who he was.

Judging people is not an exact science, but it is very much a necessary activity, especially in selecting a POTUS.

Again, the US is a free country, so you are free to disagree. Still, there was a lot of definitely unusual information, commonly offensive to a lot of people, before Obama was elected.

[coldtea]

Maybe those "huge fractions of US citizens" for which these things are "biggies" are part of what's wrong with the country.

[nkurz]

  "My Muslim faith": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMUgNg7aD8M
 
  Some people will look at that clip and conclude that Obama    
  just misspoke or was repeating something McCain didn't say 
  but might have, etc. 

I appreciate you posting that video. Watching, I feel that clearly the context is "John McCain himself hasn't said that I'm a Muslim but he insinuates it", and that he's just phrasing it as a counterfactual. I was interested enough to find a longer version of the interview (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMhB-CwF4yc) and it struck me the same way.

But clearly you and others read it differently. I'd guess that's because you are (proudly) Christian, and don't think a "true" Christian would ever say intentionally say the words "my Muslim faith" if there was any chance of misunderstanding? A sort of reverse-shibboleth, akin to testing whether someone is an undercover informant by asking them to do something clearly illegal?

My guess has always been that Obama, like many politicians, is less devoutly Christian than many of his followers want him to be, but I've never suspected that he actually considers himself Muslim. Instead, I'd guess that he harbors enough religious doubt that he feels guilty about claiming to be Christian, but feels compelled to overstate his religiousness for political reasons.

Is this the sort of conclusion you draw from the video, or do you see it as evidence that he is actually committed to Islam? What's the thought process behind your interpretation?

[graycat]

To me Obama is a subject I wish I'd never heard about. I don't want to know about Obama. But I am a US citizen and, thus, basically need to try to understand him. To understand him is, as usual for people, not an exact science, but I have to try.

My first conclusion is that no way before he leaves office will he really say what or who he is. Not a chance. So, instead, he is putting on an act, much more than nearly anyone else. I do believe that he enjoys his acting and coming close to the line of revealing enough to let people draw conclusions but still leaving some ambiguity. He enjoys toying with the public perception of him without having the public draw serious, actual conclusions much like a cat can enjoy toying with a mouse without actually killing it.

IMHO, he gets away with his acting because the mainstream media (MSM) and nearly everyone in US public life want the Obama presidency to look successful, care about that even more than Obama does.

For most of the more important policy actions of the US in the last year or so, I have to conclude that they are very different from everything about Obama before a year ago, e.g., in the last year, what the US is finally actually doing against ISIS, the Chinese activity in the South China Sea, what North Korea is doing, and some US military advanced weapons programs. And I would include US diplomatic interactions with Netanyahu and Israel.

So, my guess is that Obama didn't direct or even approve of those policy changes. Then, meanwhile, Obama talks about letting 100,000+ Syrians into the US (I'll bet it won't happen), flies off to Hawaii for a long golf vacation, says that ISIS is "contained", shows up in Paris to claim that climate change is the most serious problem, or some such, and gave his recent call for essentially back doors on everything with an electron -- point, none of those are activities of a serious POTUS. So, for the past year, Obama has not been a serious POTUS. So, a guess is that in effect he is no longer the POTUS and that about a year ago a committee of leaders had a chat with Obama and told him the good news, he gets to stay in office and work on his golf game and jump shot, have bro dinners in the White House, etc. And more good news: He doesn't have to bother himself or lose sleep or interrupt his golf game to think about the work of POTUS. And the alternative? He leaves office right away. More evidence is the Ryan budget -- it was totally bipartisan and in other ways outrageous. So, in getting that budget passed something was up, and I can't believe that Obama had anything to do with it.

But the above is just the simple, superficial, easy to observe stuff about Obama.

For a real answer to your question, I should not answer dishonestly or answer honestly in public. Ask me again this time next year. I do suspect that at about this time next year will come out some tell all books from some Administration insiders, Congressional staffers, etc. that will be well beyond anything commonly discussed now. The US will have been seen to have "dodged a bullet", that some patriots came together and saved the country from a serious threat.

It's a free country. You can have your opinion. You asked for mine, and I gave a little. You can continue for yourself from there.

[nkurz]

I appreciate the genuine response, although your explanations for events seem bizarre to me. I find them parallel to another current front-page article on mental illness:

  I had tried to fill the gaps with guesses. But when my   
  guesses were wrong, conspiracy theories crawled in.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/13/opinion/sunday/the-neurosc...

For me, the explanation that politicians are fallible humans is mostly sufficient. My guess would be that nothing to contradict Obama's official narrative comes out after he leaves office.

But I also fear that my own reasoning is flawed in ways invisible to me. We'll see what truth the future brings to light. Thanks for engaging.

[graycat]

Yup, sometimes something that goes bump in the night is dangerous and sometimes it is not. And sometimes we can guess that we heard something that went bump in the night but nothing did.

There are some bad things out there. We need to try to detect them. That sometimes we guess wrong doesn't mean we shouldn't try. But before we draw big conclusions and take important action, we need to be very careful -- measure at least twice and saw just once and because we may not get to saw twice.