10.13.2008

Let's get a few things straight.

I'd like to address some smears that have resurfaced - once again - and only because the sheer willful ignorance about separating fact from fiction - or the inability to do so has begun to give me a headache. So, let's be clear, McCain and Co have released the hounds and the smears that have been let loose are running rampantly around, here are a few of them:

Barack Obama Is, in fact, a US citizen, and from Factcheck:



“When Barack Obama Jr. was born on Aug. 4,1961, in Honolulu, Kenya was a British colony, still part of the United Kingdom’s dwindling empire. As a Kenyan native, Barack Obama Sr. was a British subject whose citizenship status was governed by The British Nationality Act of 1948. That same act governed the status of Obama Sr.‘s children.

Since Sen. Obama has neither renounced his U.S. citizenship nor sworn an oath of allegiance to Kenya, his Kenyan citizenship automatically expired on Aug. 4,1982.”


Obama does not refuse to place his hand over his heart for the pledge, refuse to say the pledge, or any other unpatriotic nonsense. From ABC:



Obama said the photo was taken during the singing of the national anthem, not the pledge.

“My grandfather taught me how to say the Pledge of Allegiance when I was 2,” Obama said, his annoyance obvious. “During the Pledge of Allegiance you put your hand over your heart. During the national anthem you sing.


Yes, Michelle Obama is proud of her country. From ABC:

Appearing eager to set the record straight [on ABC’s The View] in front of a television audience of millions of women, Obama said she is “proud of my country, without a doubt.”

“I’m a girl who grew up in a working-class neighborhood in Chicago let me tell you, of course I’m proud,” she said. “Nowhere but in America could my story be possible.”

“What I was talking about is pride in the political process,” she said.


Yes, Obama supports the troops, from Factcheck:

This is another viral e-mail falsehood. The author now says it's not true; the Army says it's not true; and video and photos show Obama shaking hands with troops and eating breakfast with them as well.


The swiftboater is responsible for the attacks on Obama about Ayers

From the website:
In 2004, Harold Simmons was the biggest funder of the manipulative smear group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. In 2008, Simmons is the sole donor funding a vicious attack ad in some battleground states that uses tortured logic and clumsy innuendo to invent a tie between Barack Obama and terrorism.

The ad goes completely beyond the pale by cynically exploiting the tragedy of 9/11 in an unfounded connection with Chicago academic William Ayers. Then it claims that Ayers somehow “launched” Barack Obama’s career — an assertion so outlandish that not even Simmons’ fellow discredited Swift Boater Jerome Corsi included it in his smear book.

The ad may even be a criminal violation of campaign finance laws. Simmons has previously been fined tens of thousands of dollars for campaign finance violations – including forging the signatures of his own daughters to make political contributions from trust funds.


Obama is not part of Acorn, from the website:

Discredited Republican voter-suppression guru Ken Blackwell is attacking Barack Obama with naked lies about his supposed connection to ACORN.

• Fact: Barack was never an ACORN community organizer.
• Fact: ACORN never hired Obama as a trainer, organizer, or any type of employee.
• Fact: ACORN was not part of Project Vote, the successful voter registration drive Barack ran in 1992.

In his capacity as an attorney, Barack represented ACORN in a successful lawsuit alongside the U.S. Department of Justice against the state of Illinois to force state compliance with a federal voting access law. For his work helping enforce the law, called “Motor Voter,” Barack received the IVI-IPO Legal Eagle Award in 1995. (For more about Barack’s career, check out our Obama bio.)


Obama's financial advisors are not Fannie and Freddie.

The McCain campaign is the one with many ties to key lobbyists and advisers to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, including the campaign’s campaign manager Rick Davis and McCain’s Senate Chief of Staff Mark Buse. Read more about their extensive ties to Fannie and Freddie here: Newsweek, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. John McCain started smearing Barack Obama about non-existent ties to Fannie Mae in some of his deceptive attack ads. Anonymous smear emails have followed McCain’s lead by fabricating even more connections.

These smears disguise the fact that Barack actually has a sensible, detailed plan to fix the economy — and it’s a much better source of answers than anonymous attack emails.

The non-partisan fact-check website Snopes.com looked into these smears, and their conclusions about Barack and the Fannie Mae executives shouldn’t be surprising: “None of them has (or apparently ever had) ongoing roles with the campaign as chief economic advisors.”

Not an adviser: Frank Raines
Barack estimates that he and Raines have talked for “maybe five minutes” in their lives, and Frank Raines himself even released a statement saying that he is “not an advisor to Barack Obama, nor have I provided his campaign with advice on housing or economic matters.”

Not an adviser: Tim Howard
This supposed connection appears to have been made up completely out of thin air. Snopes.com writes, “We haven’t yet found any tangible connection between Tim Howard and the Obama campaign, however, much less any information supporting the claim that Howard is a ‘chief economic adviser’ to Obama.”

Not an adviser: Jim Johnson
Jim Johnson has never held a paid position with Obama for America. He volunteered to help Barack select a vice presidential nominee but stepped down after just one week.


And finally, no, Obama is not friends with William Ayers
From the NYtimes:

A review of records of the schools project and interviews with a dozen people who know both men, suggest that Mr. Obama, 47, has played down his contacts with Mr. Ayers, 63. But the two men do not appear to have been close. Nor has Mr. Obama ever expressed sympathy for the radical views and actions of Mr. Ayers, whom he has called “somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8.”


And from CNN:
CNN Fact check wrote about Palin’s claim that Obama is palling around with terrorists, “Verdict: False. There is no indication that Ayers and Obama are now “palling around,” or that they have had an ongoing relationship in the past three years. Also, there is nothing to suggest that Ayers is now involved in terrorist activity or that other Obama associates are.”


OK great, I'd like everyone to move on now, and get over the fact that Obama is ahead, and that McCain's got nuthin'.

Oh, the Gallup poll today:

Obama 51%, McCain 41%.

And check out the electoral map on RealClearPolitics it's a doozy.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

It makes my skin crawl when I see how these campaigns are being conducted. Politicians have always got up to some dirty shennanigans but the use of smear campaigns for the want of any decent policies makes me want to barf my guts out.

Unknown said...

You taking the time to clear the murky, dirty, foul waters of "that one" McCain's Campaign is GREATLY appreciated Anok!

Every bit helps Obama/Biden clear up the lies. I wonder what's gonna come out just before this next debate...I hear Jaws music playing in my head!!

;0)

Anok said...

By the way, did you know there is a place to report new and old and repeated smears to the Obama campaign?

In the right hand side bar of the links I provide in the post, you'll see an email to report smears - send them a line or two (and forward any relevant material, or e mails that have been forwarded to you with the smear in it) and they will investigate and keep track of what's being said. It's a great way to keep on top of everything.

I didn't even list or address all of the smears being used against Obama, either. It's freaking disgusting!

Malcolm said...

Thanks for providing this detailed breakdown and separating the fact from the fiction. My hope is that the people who most need to read this (the McCain supporters who believe every anti-Obama "fact" they hear) do so.

Dave Dubya said...

As our man Stephen Colbert said, "Reality has a liberal bias."

Reality and truth have always been the enemies of the Reich Wingers.

Monkey Suit said...

The people that believe this stuff in the first place are morons.

Fran said...

I have not stood up for, recited or sang the ntl anthem or pledge since the US illegally invaded Iraq.
I'll say them when the US conducts this country in an honorable way.
I loathe false patriotism.

Anonymous said...

Finally! Yes! I'm glad this is out there! I just did a piece like this myself, only with a lot less fact and a lot more common sense heh.

In any case, amazing post, I'll be bookmarking this for later!

Unknown said...

Yes Barack Obama is obviously a citizen. I mean he couldn't run if he wasn't.
"Yes, Michelle Obama is proud of her country"
Michelle Obama :So then why did she say she wasn't proud of her country till Obama became a candidate? So in her mind one person made all the difference and before that she disliked the U.S. I have questions that she really likes the country or just Barack.
And by Obama saying that she was proud of her country on ABC means absolutely nothing. What is Obama gonna say anyway? "No she did not like the country at all before I became a candidate". I mean that would make no sense campaign wise. She is just covering her butt.

Yes Obama supports the troops, but if you don't support what they are doing in Iraq, then you aren't really supporting them.

"Obama is not part of Acorn" You say this website explains everything, but I have an article that says just the opposite.

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NDZiMjkwMDczZWI5ODdjOWYxZTIzZGIyNzEyMjE0ODI=&w=Mg==#more
According to this Obama did train many of Madeline Talbot's staff.
And also, "Obama’s long service with Acorn led many members to serve as the volunteer shock troops of Obama’s early political campaigns — his initial 1996 State Senate campaign, and his failed bid for Congress in 2000"
this is very interesting stuff when you read into it, but of course it doesn't matter to liberals.

"Obama's financial advisors are not Fannie and Freddie Mac"
Notice that the sources he gets his facts from are from Newsweek, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. All of which are extremely liberal and have endorsed Barack Obama in the campaign. But, if you look on http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0708/11781.html we learn that Barack Obama's presidential vetter Jim Johnson actually worked for them at one point. (so did McCains vetter Arthur B. Culvahouse jr.) So don't go pointing out that McCain is a big crook when Obama is the same exact thing. Its politics so what do you expect.

Not an adviser: Frank Raines
Interesting.. it seems i have found an article that has Raines saying key information about Obama and i quote "I asked Huslin to provide the exact circumstances of that passage," wrote Michael Dobbs, who writes the Post's Fact Checker blog. "She said she was chatting with Raines during the photo shoot, and asked 'if he was engaged at all with the Democrats' quest for the White House. He said that he had gotten a couple of calls from the Obama campaign. I asked him about what, and he said, Oh, general housing, economy issues.' And looky here this is from your beloved Real Clear Politics site.

Obama is not friends with Bill Ayers? So why did he start his campaign from his house? Check this article out from the Chicago Sun times. "In the mid-1990s, Ayers and Dohrn hosted a meet-and-greet at their house to introduce Obama to their neighbors during his first run for the Illinois Senate. In 2001, Ayers contributed $200 to Obama's campaign. Ayers also served alongside Obama between December 1999 and December 2002 on the board of the not-for-profit Woods Fund of Chicago. That board met four times a year, and members would see each other at occasional dinners the group hosted." And again this is a liberal newspaper.

"In addition, Ayers and Obama interacted occasionally in their roles with the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a not-for-profit group charged with spending tens of millions of dollars it obtained through its affiliation with a school-improvement foundation created by late Ambassador Walter H. Annenberg. Obama chaired the Chicago Annenberg Challenge's board of directors. Ayers served on the Chicago School Reform Collaborative, which made recommendations to the board on which organizations should get grants. The groups worked on school-reform efforts between 1995 and 2000." (http://www.suntimes.com/news/politics/obama/902213,CST-NWS-ayers18.article)


And this so called Real Clear Politics site is a bunch of bologna. I looked into its blog posts and they seem to be liberal. Then I looked on its title page and it had a "AOL" type layout.