Barack "Al Gore/Kerry" Obama
The more Barack Obama gets public exposure and attention, the more he seems to be morphing in to former Democratic presidential candidates, Al Gore Jr. and John Kerry. He seems to have a real penchant for embellishment and a problem with facts and dates. Add to this an ever growing list of ethical questions, and you have the perfect candidate for President of the United States.
At first I thought that many of the negative portrayals of Sen. Obama were the work of the Clinton hit squad, however, recently the Senator from Illinois has been digging his own hole and throwing dirt on himself without any help from others.
Before I go on, I realize that there are those who will defend the senator, simply because he is not a Republican, and others who will defend him simply because he shares our skin color. This post is not for you. It is for those who actually care about character and truth in a Presidential candidate.
But I digress.
While I could do what many others have already done and question Sen. Obama's wife's 160% pay raise 2 months after his election to the senate, or their home & land deal with an indicted campaign fund raiser, or the seeming inconsistency in what the Obama's say, what they do or how they live. Michelle Obama stated last summer that they made just enough to get by and way beneath their friends. It reminds me of an opening scene from the film, Malibu's most wanted, in which the young Malibu rapper shows us a view of his mansion on a Malibu hill and says, "it ain't much but it's home." Or questions of his investments in fund raisers firms, or, why the Senator just this week paid $300 in parking fines in Boston, from his days at Harvard over 17 years ago? I will let others deal with that. I want to focus on the senator's own words. I want to focus on the senator's recent speech commemorating the 1965 Selma March. Here are a few excerpts: (to view video of the speech click on the title above)
"...something happened back here in Selma, Alabama. Something happened in Birmingham that sent out what Bobby Kennedy called, “Ripples of hope all around the world.” Something happened when a bunch of women decided they were going to walk instead of ride the bus after a long day of doing somebody else's laundry, looking after somebody else's children. When men who had PhD’s decided that's enough and we’re going to stand up for our dignity. That sent a shout across oceans so that my grandfather began to imagine something different for his son. His son, who grew up herding goats in a small village in Africa could suddenly set his sights a little higher and believe that maybe a black man in this world had a chance.
What happened in Selma, Alabama and Birmingham also stirred the conscience of the nation. It worried folks in the White House who said, “You know, we're battling Communism. How are we going to win hearts and minds all across the world? If right here in our own country, John, we're not observing the ideals set fort in our Constitution, we might be accused of being hypocrites.” So the Kennedy’s decided we're going to do an air lift. We're going to go to Africa and start bringing young Africans over to this country and give them scholarships to study so they can learn what a wonderful country America is.
This young man named Barack Obama got one of those tickets and came over to this country. He met this woman whose great great-great-great-grandfather had owned slaves; but she had a good idea there was some craziness going on because they looked at each other and they decided that we know that the world as it has been it might not be possible for us to get together and have a child. There was something stirring across the country because of what happened in Selma, Alabama, because some folks are willing to march across a bridge. So they got together and Barack Obama Jr. was born. So don't tell me I don't have a claim on Selma, Alabama. Don't tell me I’m not coming home to Selma, Alabama."
Lynn Sweet Sun times Group blog- March 5, 2007
Please forgive me, but I only received a bachelor's degree in business from Texas Tech University while the senator attended Harvard Law School, so my math and reasoning skills may be inferior to his. I will let you judge.
Barack Obama says that John F. Kennedy was responsible for something that happened in Selma, Alabama. Something that Bobby Kennedy said "sent a shout across oceans." A shout that caused his grandfather to imagine something different for his son and "set his sights a little higher, and believe that maybe a black man in this world had a chance."
He went on to say that Kennedy wanted to do an airlift and start bringing young Africans to America, giving them scholarships.
In his speech Obama evoked the names of everyone whose photo has ever graced a black church hand fan, or the walls of black homes for decades. There is only a big problem with all he said, John F. Kennedy was not elected president until 1960, and Selma not until 1965 when Obama was 4 years old and living in Indonesia, and his father had long since returned to Kenya.
Essentially, everything Obama said was either a blatant lie, or a gross lack of knowledge of history. Furthermore, Obama's parents met and conceived Obama before Kennedy was even elected president, or inaugurated in January of 1961. The immigration and foreign exchange program he attributed to JFK was actually introduced under the Eisenhower (a Republican) administration.
This is reminiscent of Al Gore's inventing the internet, Hillary Clinton being named after the man who climbed Mt. Everest, even though she was born before the event occurred, and John Kerry's imaginary trip to Cambodia and other blatant misstatements.
As I stated earlier, this creates some very serious questions of character, in my mind, or worse. If the Senator did not purposely stretch the truth to gain credibility with an ignorant audience, he has a very poor foundation and understanding of historical fact. If that is the case, I would say that his credibility in understanding serious issues and lessons of history make him a dangerous choice for president of the United States.
We need to ask some very serious questions of the senator from Illinois. It is not enough to be black, it is not enough to be articulate, even eloquent and a media darling. If my suspicions are correct, we will begin seeing a pattern of misstatements and revelations from Senator Obama. The only question then will be how deaf an ear, or how blind an eye will people turn in order to make a frog into a prince.
posted by Eddie Huff @ 8:07 PM
9 Comments:
Check out the update links on the not-exactly-liberal Hot Air blog. When Kennedy was a senator in 1959, the Kennedy Foundation funded the airlifting of Kenyan students. Link:
http://hotair.com/archives/2007/03/05/audio-hillary-obama-develop-southern-accents-for-selma/
Also, Selma was in 1965!!! He said he meant the broader civil rights movement had enabled his existence, and he had indeed mentioned Birmingham as well as Selma. Finally, Obama paid his parking tickets not this week but after a newspaper had contacted him about them - this was in January! Fix your timeline first.
Dear Anonymous,
Your comments verify my post and would have you fall into one of my 2 categories of denyers. You defend Obama simply eacuse he is black, or because he is not a Republican and the anti-Bush.
But I do thank you for proofing my post for me. I had actually changed the 1967 typo error that I caught mself in a draft, but the link to republish did not publish the change. Thanks to you I realized that and republshed that change. With regard to the Selma/Birmingham reference, OK take your pick. Either way he was lying or way off. Let's assume he refered to Birmingham, even though he was in Selma honoring the Selma march, but let's just use Birmingham, he was still 3 years off. Birmingham took place in 1963, so what is the diff.? His parents met in 1960.
With regard to the parking tickets, last week, or last month, what is the difference other than instead of him doing it on his own, he was outed or about to be outed by a newspaper, and he wanted to beat them to the punch. I did not even refer to the newspaper discovering it, thank you again.
You miss the point entirely. You are what a A lot of " Yeah buts." No matter what your are presented with you have a "yeah but." So what is the use, I already said this was not for you.
I have to say that the post at the top never mentioned blackness or Republicans, but it does answer your question about Kennedy. The post says that Kennedy was responsible for Obama's Kenyan father coming to America, because Kennedy was a senator before he was president, and he funded Obama's dad's trip to America, according to the link.
JFK was not the only Kennedy you know.
It was the Joseph P. Kennedy Foundation, working with the legendary Kenyan Tom Mboya (who was later assassinated) that was responsible for Obama's father coming to the US in 1959. Here is a link to a 1960 Time magazine article about it: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/
article/0,9171,939162-1,00.html
And here is the link to a Black Republican woman (who is hardly an Obama fan) whose own African father was a beneficiary of this program.
http://baldilocks.typepad.com/baldilocks/
2007/03/africans_and_am.html
It's called RESEARCH - not simply defending Obama because he is black.
Obama's a Chicago Politican. I voted for him for Illinois Senator but didn't have idea how Chicago he was until he started running for Prez.
I won't use the "A" word but he sure can talk... get down to it though I fear he's a phoney.
Baldilocks, a Black conservative, clears this up.
But it won't matter to you because the truth doesn't matter as long as you can attempt to "win" for your political position.
Ed,
Actually, you make the same mistake that anonymous makes. First you choose one out of 3 problems with the Obama speech to address, and tha makes it all good,and then even at that you apparently did not read the 1960 Time article in its entirety. Apparently Baldilocks did not either. The article makes it clear that the State Department gave the money to the Kenyan project, but they still wanted the funds from the Kennedy foundation as well. So one could say that Richard Nixon was a visionary, but he did not, of course, get any props. It was not clear if they got both. But that is really irrelevant.
Sorry, but it is you who didn't read the article correctly, Mr. Huff.
"In December and again in January, the foundation asked the State Department for a $100,000 grant. The answer was a firm no from Career Diplomat Joseph C. Satterthwaite, chief of the State Department's African Desk."
"A New York Negro (sic)named Frank Montero, president of the student foundation, wrote to Nixon, recalling his interest in Africa and asking for his help. Nixon turned Montero's request over to Satterthwaite, who promptly rejected it for the third time." [snip]
"Kennedy's brother-in-law and managing director of the family foundation, found no uncommitted funds in other charitable foundations, in the end recommended that the Kennedy Foundation put up the entire $100,000, and provide unstipulated help for students during their stay in the U.S."
"When word of all this leaked out, the Nixon camp quickened its interest in the African airlift." [snip]
"Last week, half an hour before Montero met with Shriver in Washington to work out a final agreement, Shepley called with the glad tidings: the State Department had reversed itself and was ready to put up the $100,000 grant after all."
The State Department kept saying 'no' until the Kennedys stepped in and showed them up. Then they were ready to pony up. But did they?
Montero: "The fact is, the State Department has repeatedly turned a cold shoulder to the airlift Africa program . . . On Monday of this week the State Department suddenly took interest in the project."
And the article doesn't say who finally paid for the trip. George M. Houser does, however, say that the trip was paid for by the Kennedys (page 4 of "Meeting Africa's Challenge..." buy it if you want.) So does my father.
Reading to the end of an article does no good when one doesn't comprehend what's being said--or not said.
Juliette A. Ochieng aka baldilocks
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