Obama Lies #1: He Sure Has A Funny Name!
OttO on Aug 05 2008 at 10:07 pm | Filed under: Jihad Watch, Politics
We can go back to any campaign of any politician and (correctly or incorrectly) attribute spin and lies to a candidate. Senator Barack Obama, lacking substance and experience, appears poised to win an election based on lie after lie.
This is to be the first in what I feel is going to be an extensive series in the next 13 weeks. From his claims regarding his history with the United Trinity Church (what did he know about Jeremiah Wright and when did he know it?) to his claims to have 20 years of public service; from stating that all Americans should learn Spanish and French as second languages (he speaks neither) to his strategy of losing in Iraq in order to win in Afghanistan (almost entirely based on lies); from his stance that he's willing to debate John McCain (after refusing every attempt by McCain to do so) to the motivation of his Kenyan father in emigrating to America - candidate Obama is very much like candidate Bill Clinton without the political background. Anyone recall the repeated staged drama of women fainting at Obama rally-after-rally earlier this year?
My views of Obama over the months have progressed from curiosity and admiration to disbelief and contempt. I already knew that politically I would be opposed to Obama but there are Democrats who I disagree with and respect. Barack Obama is not one of them.
The first lie to cover appropriately is the most recent: Obama's response to his opponent, Senator John McCain. McCain has been going after Obama for his lack of experience and his poor judgment. A recent campaign ad refers to Obama, the celebrity cult-of-personality while depicting images of tabloid superstars like Paris Hilton. The ad then goes on to address differences between the candidates on nuclear energy and oil drilling.
Obama's response, made at a campaign stop in Missouri - and repeated in other speeches - has made waves in media because he has done what many of us viewed as inevitable: he injected racial victimization.
"Nobody thinks that Bush and McCain have a real answer to the challenges we face. So what they're going to try to do is make you scared of me. You know, 'he's not patriotic enough, he's got a funny name, he doesn't look like all those other presidents on those dollar bills.'"
The first question is: who are "they"? Bush has said little about Obama. McCain has said nothing about Obama's name, race or ethnicity. Not in the aforementioned ad; not ever. McCain has responded swiftly to people supposedly representing his campaign who have tried to bring Obama's name and race into play. As I've said in the past, there is plenty to run against Obama on - these trivial and divisive messages are unnecessary. McCain out does Obama in virtually every measurable trait that we use to determine a president's qualifications. Even if McCain could get traction from sinking to these levels, he doesn't need it to demonstrate that he would be a better president.
Obama makes the dollar bill statement in a way that suggests that McCain or his campaign have ever compared Barack Obama physically to George Washington or Abraham Lincoln (Obama did insert the five dollar bill in once performance). It's simply not true and not only is the sentiment a lie, but as the counterattack this was staged as, it's downright false. It implies something that has never been suggested by the McCain campaign.
Of course when a politician or a candidate lies, it is often followed up with more lies through efforts of damage control. The McCain campaign responded by saying that Obama "played the race card - from the bottom of the deck."
Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs denied it:
"What Barack Obama was talking about was that he didn't get here after spending decades in Washington. There is nothing more to this than the fact that he was describing that he was new to the political scene. He was referring to the fact that he didn't come into the presidential race with the history of others. It is not about race."
This appears to be the standard from Democrats defending Obama or attacking McCain: take a statement and make up whatever you want in describing it. They did it to McCain in regards with the '100 years of war in Iraq' lie. They did it repeatedly throughout the Jeremiah Wright scandal. They do it now by redirecting Obama's words to mean something that they didn't even come close to saying.
After a couple of days of Obama defenders trying to explain, as Gibbs did, that it wasn't about race, another key member of Obama's campaign, David Axelrod, admitted that Obama was drawing a distinction between himself and past presidents, summing it up with, "Yes, he's African-American."
I'm just waiting for Barack Obama to announce at some point that he is in fact not black, that it's all just a smear designed by the McCain camp to hurt his chances in the general election.
Paris Hilton doesn't exactly look like George Washington either. Maybe if she runs for local office now, she can be the Democratic front runner in 2012. She just might be more trustworthy than Obama.
