I have written recently on the lying that is going on in this presidential campaign. A good friend of mine and a staunch conservative (These categories are not mutually exclusive. The guy I am talking about is as thoughtful and trustworthy a person as one could find on this planet) has sent me a response to one of my recent blogs. In his response he sets forth the various discrepancies and lies spread by Obama and his followers. One of the real dangers in assessing the candidacies is getting caught up in the emotional impact of selecting one candidate over another. That tendency is magnified if one chooses to disregard the 'negatives' of one's favorite and, instead, focuses on embellishing the negatives of the other side. I am determined not to do this, although I will admit that looking back over the past two months or so, I have been particularly vituperative in my blogging against McCain and Palin, mainly because I have been disappointed in McCain for abandoning principle for the expediency of politics inasmuch as his principles were his strengths. Without belaboring the point, the McCain of the past has done many fine things based upon his principles that have served the nation well, and I am not referring at all to his military past. Instead I will set forth the various charges against the Obama campaign that my friend has sent me. What follows is his response and I need to put it in the proper context. On the same day that I received his response, I received no fewer than fourteen(14) e-mails from others of a disgusting nature that, at best, can be described as racist. By far, the ugliest was a doctored photo of Obama polishing Palin's boots. So much for objective discourse on the qualifications of the candidates for the highest office in the land. There is a less than subtle grass roots campaign going on against Obama below the radar, so to speak, and my fervor about these efforts is a determination that the color of a man's skin not be the basis for the selection of our next President. Here is the response:
"Hi Tom--
"just a little pointed question and a few more tirades from the right.
"Do you have as much fun with a presidential candidate who thinks there are 58 states in the union? Earlier this month in Oregon, he redrew the map of the United States: “Over the last 15 months, we’ve traveled to every corner of the United States. I’ve now been in 57 states? I think one left to go.”
"With a vice-presidential candidate who thinks FDR was president and got on TV when the stock market crashed?
"A man who thinks he was conceived during the Selma march --Marking the anniversary of the March 1965 "Bloody Sunday" in Selma, Ala., Obama, speaking at a church, said his parents got together "because of what happened in Selma." Obama was born in 1961.
"On this Memorial Day, as our nation honors its unbroken line of fallen heroes — and I see many of them in the audience here today — our sense of patriotism is particularly strong. The Messiah is seeing the dead heroes in the audience.
"…Obama also spoke about his uncle, who was part of the American brigade that helped to liberate Auschwitz…
"Auschwitz of course is in Poland. It was liberated by the Red Army on Jan 27 1945. Poland, on most maps is usually placed to the east of Germany, although we may need to investigate the geography textbooks the Messiah used as a child…
""My Muslim faith" what a slip of the tongue--I don't think he is Muslim--but he sure doesn't help to put his critics at ease.
"His boast that he helped pass legislation regulating the nuclear industry (when that legislation didn't pass the full Senate).
"Last March, the Chicago Tribune reported this little-noticed nugget about a fake autobiographical detail in Obama’s Dreams from My Father: “Then, there’s the copy of Life magazine that Obama presents as his racial awakening at age 9. In it, he wrote, was an article and two accompanying photographs of an African-American man physically and mentally scarred by his efforts to lighten his skin. In fact, the Life article and the photographs don’t exist, say the magazine’s own historians.”
" And in perhaps the most seriously troubling set of gaffes of them all, Obama told a Portland crowd over the weekend that Iran doesn’t “pose a serious threat to us” — cluelessly arguing that “tiny countries” with small defense budgets can’t do us harm — and then promptly flip-flopped the next day, claiming, “I’ve made it clear for years that the threat from Iran is grave.”
"This next gaffe is especially egregious--exposing him for the liar he is. His attempt to take advantage of a family's grief for political advantage.
"I have a bracelet too--
"Why wear a hero's bracelet but not taking the time to remember the hero's name by heart. Obama had three day to prepare for this debate and apparently did not have time to memorize the name.
"However, Madison resident Brian Jopek, the father of Ryan Jopek, the young soldier who tragically lost his life to a roadside bomb in 2006, recently said on a Wisconsin Public Radio show that his family had asked Barack Obama to stop wearing the bracelet with his son's name on it. Yet Obama continues to do so despite the wishes of the family.
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"The Clinton campaign had their issues with Obama--but seem now to put them aside:
"the Illinois senator’s controversial remarks about “bitter” small-town Pennsylvanians who “cling” to religion and other cultural stances out of economic despair — comments immediately characterized by New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and McCain as condescending — have suddenly reintroduced an unwelcome issue, undermining the progress made by concerted Democratic Party outreach to religious voters and reinvigorating criticism that the effort to woo religious voters is more rhetoric than substance.
"Last May, he claimed that tornadoes in Kansas killed a whopping 10,000 people: “In case you missed it, this week, there was a tragedy in Kansas. Ten thousand people died — an entire town destroyed.” The actual death toll: 12.
"He thinks Afghans speak Arabic;
"Earlier this month in Cape Girardeau, Mo., Obama showed off his knowledge of the war in Afghanistan by homing in on a lack of translators: “We only have a certain number of them, and if they are all in Iraq, then it’s harder for us to use them in Afghanistan.” The real reason it’s “harder for us to use them” in Afghanistan: Iraqis speak Arabic or Kurdish. The Afghanis speak Pashto, Farsi, or other non-Arabic languages.
"He is no better in our hemisphere: He thinks Canada has a president.
"He blames Bush for Chavez being in power in Venezuela:
"On Friday Barack Obama spelled out his Latin America policy [snip]:
Since the Bush Administration launched a misguided war in Iraq, its policy in the Americas has been negligent toward our friends, ineffective with our adversaries, disinterested in the challenges that matter in peoples' lives, and incapable of advancing our interests in the region.
No wonder, then, that demagogues like Hugo Chavez have stepped into this vacuum.
"This is pathetic. Hugo Chavez came to power during the Clinton Administration, and was first elected President of Venezuela in 1998, two years before the Bush Administration took office.
Oh--his apologists try to say that Chavez was not a problem until the Iraq war--that he would hafve continued the normal relations with the US. Right--just like Castro--he kept his Marxist views hidden until he had the power after ousting president Fulgencio Batista, the dictator before him.
"What would he do about Venezuela--it is hard to tell from this:
"More recently, Obama as he traveled through Florida seemed to give some contradictory statements about Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez and the Colombian terrorist group FARC.
"On Thursday Obama told the Orlando Sentinel that he would meet with Chavez and "one of the obvious high priorities in my talks with President Hugo Chavez would be the fermentation of anti-American sentiment in Latin America, his support of FARC in Colombia and other issues he would want to talk about."
"OK, so a strong declaration that Chavez is supporting FARC, which Obama intends to push him on.
"But then on Friday he said any government supporting FARC should be isolated.
"We will shine a light on any support for the FARC that comes from neighboring governments," he said in a speech in Miami. "This behavior must be exposed to international condemnation, regional isolation, and - if need be - strong sanctions. It must not stand."
"So he will meet with the leader of a country he simultaneously says should be isolated? Huh?
"How many more gaffes until we can call him Stupid !
"Barack Obama — promoted by the Left and the media as an all-knowing, articulate, transcendent Messiah — is a walking, talking gaffe machine. How many more passes does he get? How many more can we afford?
"And surprisingly, it seems that Biden is trying to compete with Obama for Stupid.:
"Biden's string of slip-ups started last Monday. Asked by NBC's Meredith Vieira whether the Fed should bail out insurance giant AIG, the senator said no: "I don't think they should be bailed out by the federal government." Unfortunately, the remark had more in common with McCain's initial position on the bailout (instinctive opposition) than Obama's carefully cultivated claim that he would not "second-guess" the government. When the bailout went through, both Biden and McCain bowed to reality. But the shift left Obama in a tricky position--as Matt Lauer pointed out this morning on "Today." Noting that Obama had been hitting McCain for flip-flopping on the AIG bailout, Lauer asked the Illinois senator how he could criticize his Republican rival when his own running mate had made the same mistake. His answer? "I think Joe should have waited, as well." Awkward.
"The past few days have been even worse. Speaking Thursday on ABC's "Good Morning America," Biden not only acknowledged that the wealthy would pay higher taxes if if he and Obama won the White House but said that doing so would be "patriotic." "It's time to be patriotic," he said. "Time to jump in, time to be part of the deal, time to help get America out of the rut." Whether or not you agree with that sentiment, emphasizing that Obama would raise rates on rich folks (instead of saying that he'd lower them on the middle-classes) was clearly off-message--and the "patriotism" sound bite gave the GOP something catchy to hang its "redistribution of wealth" hat on. Accompanied by a sarcastic ad, McCain's response was scathing: "Raising taxes in a tough economy isn't patriotic. It's not a badge of honor. It's just dumb policy." Expect to hear more on Biden's idea of patriotism before Nov. 4.
"Incredibly, though, the senator seems to have saved the worst for last. Asked last night by Katie Couric on the "CBS Evening News," Biden delivered what has to be most off-message statement yet: that one of his campaign's own ads--the spot released earlier this month mocking McCain for not being able to use a computer--was "terrible." "I didn't know we did it and if I had anything to do with it, we would have never done it," he said. The campaign was soon forced to issue a less-than-convincing clarification in Biden's name. (Apparently he'd "never seen" the ad.") Meanwhile, video surfaced this morning of Biden telling a rope-line environmentalist in Ohio that he and Obama "are not supporting clean coal" in America--even though Obama, well, is. McCain quickly pounced, using Biden's error to pivot away from Wall Street and make the case that Democrats don't support comprehensive energy solutions; conference calls and ads are in the works. Biden may have opposed the technology in the primaries--he's on record as saying "clean-coal ... is not the route to go in the United States"--but he should probably brush up on his briefing books (or pay attention to his own speeches) now that his boss disagrees.
"Now this donkey is trying to pin his tail on the elephant for the present economic crisis. Go back and study the CRA history and the story of Jamie Gorelick--26 $Million in 6 hears from FNMA--with no experience in the field. And that after the debacle of the Memo she sent out on prohibiting the FBI and Louie Frieh from sharing data that could have prevented 9-11.
"All of that history--you can find it -- but Obama continues to blast the Administration, when it was Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, Chuck Schumer, who continued to block any attempt to reform FNMA. This train wreck was foreseen by many, even Obama saw it 2 years ago, as did McCain. But others saw it much earlier, and in 2004 hearings were held--and the three Senators and Congressmen blocked any reforms. Why? They were all receiving funding from FNMA and Freddy Mac. If the corporate banking and financial company CEOs are required to pay back their bonuses--the same should apply to politicos who have been feeding at the trough. These same people passed legislation that penalized banks that did not conform to their regulations. Penalized for attempting to make sure their loans were to credit-worthy people. As a result, sub-primes were issued. People bought more home than they could afford, some with multiple homes for investment counting on a rapid rise in housing prices, real estate speculation, and now the whole purpose of the CRA was defeated as homes were no longer affordable and interest rates were adjusted. So the working poor were fooled by the social engineering of the Democrats --this was really their turf. Banks would not make such bad loans, unless they were forced to, or had an easy way to dispense them to the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. How can it be that they ended up with 50% of all the US mortgages. What ever happened to the local banks keeping mortgages in their own portfolios? Local control, local people, your trustworthy neighbors.
"There is nothing in our constitution indicating it is a federal responsibility to tell the bankers how to do business, except as relates to fairness, under the 14th Amendment.
"I am afraid that the current climate of anger is benefitting Obama's campaign, and he will certainly take advantage of it. The issues are far too complex for the majority of voters to comprehend, or be able to assess where the primary responsibility lies. But because of the anger against the Bush administration--who warned of this in 2001, 2003, 2004, and, if true, 17 times this year, before this current crisis--that anger will benefit Obama.
"As an aside our lovely Nancy Pelosi just blew out the attempt for a government bailout by her polemic. Remember, she gave 16 Democrats her approval to vote against the bailout, yet complains about the 12 Republicans that switched their vote after her tirade. Even the chairman of the committee could not convince 27 Democratic members to vote for the bill. All these Congressmen needed cover so they could vote against the bill, because to do otherwise would go against their constituents--who according to the polls I have seen, are running about 9 to 1 against that version of the bailout. Good Lord, maybe the group of twelve has shown us that the people still rule, despite what either the administration or the dealmakers in Congress think."
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