LIE: “Obama could offer no explanation of why Rita Rezko bought the vacant lot instead…” [p 169]
REALITY: OBAMA DIDN’T KNOW THAT THE LOT WAS IN RITA REZKO’S NAME UNTIL IT WAS IN THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE
Obama Said Rezko Never Explained That He Was Putting The Lot Under Rita Rezko’s Name And Obama Said He Didn’t Discover It Until The Story Broke In The Tribune. Obama was asked, “Did he ever explain to you what he was doing?” Obama replied, “No. I didn’t discover it until the issue of him purchasing this lot broke through, uh, through you.”
[Chicago Tribune Editorial Board Transcript, 3/14/08]LIE: “As fully expected, the Obama campaign continued to maintain Obama had never met Auchi, saying in effect that Levine had committed perjury.” [p 173]
REALITY: AUCHI DOES NOT RECALL MEETING THE OBAMAS
Auchi Did Not Recall Any Direct Contact With Obama. “Mr Auchi’s lawyer told the Standard: ‘As far as he
can remember he has had no direct contact with Mr Obama.’”
[The Evening Standard (London), 2/27/08]Pepper: Auchi Had “No Recollection” Of Meeting Obama Or Michelle. The Washington Post reported, “A lawyer for Auchi, Alasdair Pepper, told me by phone from London that his client also had ‘no recollection’ of any meeting with either Obama or his wife.”
[Washington Post, 4/16/08]LIE: “When he was incarcerated in Iraq, Alsammarae contacted multiple elected officials in the United States to help him. Obama’s Senate office has admitted Obama sought information from the US State Department about Alsammarae on October 16, 2006, and got a reply from the US consul in Iraq about a week later.” [p 174]
REALITY: SENATE OFFICE SENT “ROUTINE” LETTER AFTER A REQUEST FROM ALSAMMARAE’S DAUGHTER
Obama Senate Office Emails Regarding Alsammarae Appear “Routine.” Newsweek reported, “Obama claims that his administration would be ‘open’ and ‘transparent.’ To prove the point, his campaign released emails his Senate office exchanged with U.S. officials on behalf of a man imprisoned in Iraq. The intervention had the potential to cause trouble for Obama because the man, Aiham Al-Sammarae, was a business associate of Antoin (Tony) Rezko, the political fund-raiser now on trial for corruption in Chicago. Obama has taken heat for his murky relationship with Rezko, a political fixer who had a part in Obama’s purchase of a house. (Obama now calls that transaction ‘boneheaded’ and says he has given Rezko-related campaign donations to charity.) Conservative bloggers have played up the Al-Sammarae connection as a key to the Rezko story. Despite requests from NEWSWEEK, the Obama camp initially declined to release the e-mails. Late last week they did,
and the e-mail exchange appears routine.”
[Newsweek, 3/17/08]Obama’s Office Contacted State, Forwarded The Reply To Alsammarae’s Daughter And “Took No Further Action.” “Alsammarae’s family contacted multiple elected officials, including Obama’s U.S. Senate office, when Alsammarae was being held in Iraq. Obama’s office sought information from the State Department about Alsammarae on Oct. 16, 2006, and got a reply from the U.S. Consul in Iraq about a week later. Obama’s staff forwarded that reply to Alsammarae’s daughter and took no further action.”
[Chicago Sun-Times, 4/29/08]Obama’s Office Was Contacted By Alsammarae’s Daughter, Sent Letters To The US Embassy In Iraq And The US State Department. The Chicago Daily Herald reported, “The daughter of an Oak Brook man who returned to his native Iraq to help rebuild the country is pleading for the federal government to step in after he was found guilty on corruption charges…Dania Alsammarae said her father, Aiham, is innocent and believes he could be killed if sent to an Iraqi prison. Now, the family is reaching out to Illinois’ U.S. senators, Barack Obama and Dick Durbin, to shield the elder Alsammarae from Iraqi prison…Obama’s office has sent letters to the U.S. Embassy in Iraq and to the U.S. State Department seeking a probe into the matter, said Julian Green, Obama’s spokesman. Green said both agencies are investigating the case. ‘This is an active investigation and we haven’t gotten any additional information to give any type of idea of how this investigation is going to turn out,’ Green said.”
[Chicago Daily Herald, 10/19/06]LIE: “After Kellman hired him, Obama followed Alinsky’s rules by moving into the Hyde Park-Kenwood area he had been assigned to organize.” [p 184]
REALITY: OBAMA LIVED IN HYDE PARK, BUT ORGANIZED IN ALTGELD.Obama Was A Community Organizer In Altgeld Gardens. US News reported, “As a community organizer in the Altgeld Gardens public housing project in the mid-1980s, Obama, then 23, quickly emerged as a tireless and pragmatic advocate for the community—traits that characterize the kind of president he says he wants to be.”
[US News, 8/26/07]O
bama Lived In Hyde Park-Kenwood When He Was A Community Organizer. The Los Angeles Times reported, “Obama shared a one-bedroom apartment with his gray cat, Max, in Hyde Park-Kenwood - the
racially and economically diverse University of Chicago neighborhood where he lives today in an elegant Georgian revival house with his wife, Michelle, and their two daughters. Back then he owned little more than a bed, a table and crates stacked with fiction and social science books.”
[Los Angeles Times, 3/2/08]LIE: “When the 1995 Chicago Reader article surfaced in 2008, Obama supporters predictably tried to distance him from the Million Man March, arguing Obama had attended the event as an observer, not as a participant. Still, Obama’s reaction at the time was enthusiastic.” [p 191]
REALITY: IN 1995, OBAMA CRITICIZED – AT LENGTH – FARRAKHAN’S MESSAGE Obama Praised The March For Bringing African American Men Together, But Criticized The March For Its Lack Of Positive Agenda And For Its Separatist Goals. Obama said, “What I saw was a powerful demonstration of an impulse and need for African-American men to come together to recognize each other and affirm our rightful place in the society…here was a profound sense that African-American men were ready to make a commitment to bring about change in our communities and lives. But what was lacking among march organizers was a positive agenda, a coherent agenda for change. Without this agenda a lot of this energy is going to dissipate. Just as holding hands and singing ‘We shall overcome’ is not going to do it, exhorting youth to have pride in their race, give up drugs and crime, is not going to do it if we can’t find jobs and futures for the 50 percent of black youth who are unemployed, underemployed, and full of bitterness and rage. Exhortations are not enough, nor are the notions that we can create a black economy within America that is hermetically sealed from the rest of the economy and seriously tackle the major issues confronting us.”
[Chicago Reader, 12/8/95]Obama Said That Solutions For Black America Must Come From A “Multicultural, Interdependent, And International Economy” Because “Cursing Out White Folks Is Not Going To Get The Job Done. Anti-Semitic And Anti-Asian Statement Are Not Going To Lift Us Up.” Obama said, “Any solution to our unemployment catastrophe must arise from us working creatively within a multicultural, interdependent, and international economy. Any African-Americans who are only talking about racism as a barrier to our success are seriously misled if they don’t also come to grips with the larger economic forces that are creating economic insecurity for all workers--whites, Latinos, and Asians. We must deal with the forces that are depressing wages, lopping off people’s benefits right and left, and creating an earnings gap between CEOs and the lowest-paid worker that has risen in the last 20 years from a ratio of 10 to 1 to one of better than 100 to 1. This doesn’t suggest that the need to look inward emphasized by the march isn’t important, and that these African-American tribal affinities aren’t legitimate. These are mean, cruel times, exemplified by a ‘lock ‘em up, take no prisoners’ mentality that dominates the Republican-led Congress. Historically, African-Americans have turned inward and towards black nationalism whenever they have a sense, as we do now, that the mainstream has rebuffed us, and that white Americans couldn’t care less about the profound problems African-Americans are facing. But cursing out white folks is not going to get the job done. Anti-Semitic and anti-Asian statements are not going to lift us up. We’ve got some hard nuts-and-bolts organizing and planning to do. We’ve got communities to build.”
[Chicago Reader, 12/8/95]LIE: “Kessler claimed he and Obama both heard Wright preach a sermon that day in which the preacher blamed the ‘white arrogance’ of America’s Caucasian majority for the world’s suffering, especially the oppression of blacks.” [p 196]
REALITY: OBAMA WAS IN FLORIDA THE DAY OF WRIGHT’S SERMON New York Times: Obama Was In Florida On The Day That Kessler Said He Was In Chicago. The New York Times reported, “Mr. Obama, however, was giving a speech in Florida that afternoon, and his campaign reported he had not attended Mr. Wright’s church that day.”
[New York Times, 8/13/08]LIE: “Axelrod most likely liked how the speech worked with his client in Massachusetts and so decided to try it once again with Obama, perhaps thinking no one would notice.” [p 227]
REALITY: PLAGIARISM ATTACK WAS A “BASELESS AND DESPERATE PLOY” Obama And Patrick Have Admitted To Trading Each Others’ Lines. Obama said, “But you know in the end, don’t vote your fears. I’m stealing this line from my buddy (Massachusetts Gov.) Deval Patrick who stole a whole bunch of lines from me when he ran for the governorship, but it’s the right one, don’t vote your fears, vote your aspirations. Vote what you believe.”
[The New Republic, 2/18/08; ABC News, 12/21/07]Melber: Attack “Panned As A Baseless And Desperate Ploy.” Ari Melber wrote, “The Clinton Campaign’s attack on Obama’s use of the line ‘just words’ was widely panned as a baseless and desperate ploy. Her coverup might go over even worse.”
[The Nation, 2/19/08]Jimmy Carter Speechwriter Fallows: Plagiarism Charge Is “Bogus And Overstated.” James Fallows wrote, “The “plagiarism” flap over Barack Obama is bogus and overstated. It makes me think worse about whoever is pushing this complaint, rather than about Obama himself…Moreover, on the specific Patrick/Obama point at issue: it’s not as if no one had thought of this argument (about hope and inspiration), or these examples -- FDR, JFK, MLK Jr -- before Deval Patrick uttered them. Speechwriters could hardly exist without this theme or these illustrations!...The list goes on and leads to this: Talk about hope and inspiration, and you are going to use the examples both Patrick and Obama used -- and that I, as just one political speechwriter among legions, have used many times.”
[James Fallows, 2/19/08]Bill Clinton Speechwriter Kusnet: “Next Scandal, Please.” Bill Clinton speechwriter David Kusnet wrote, “If plagiarism is borrowing rhetoric without permission, Patrick most likely is happy to have Obama sound similar notes, such as hope and inspiration being more than “just words.” Even if Obama and Patrick didn’t know each other, they might use some of the same phrases because similar public figures frequently draw on common streams of public rhetoric…Next scandal, please.”
[The New Republic, 2/18/08]
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