Slick Barry!

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H O M E - C R Y P T - L I N K S  - R S S -  F E E D -  B I O
Slick Barry!

Barack Hussein Obama (Barry Soetoro) is a con artist. Obama's speeches and 
promises are slick. Most con men are - or they wouldn't be good cons.

     The following "Obama, Con - Obama and the Left" is quoted from Thomas 
Sowell, on October 25, 2008 in National Review: "Jeremiah Wright and Michael 
Pfleger are not just people with left-wing opinions. They are reckless 
demagogues preaching hatred of the lowest sort - and both are recipients of 
money from Obama...Bill Ayers is not just `an education professor' who has some 
left-wing views. He is a confessed and unrepentant terrorist, who more recently 
has put his message of resentment into the schools - an effort using money from 
a foundation that Obama headed... Nor has the help all been one way. During the 
last debate between John McCain and Barack Obama, Senator McCain mentioned that 
Sen. Obama's political campaign began in Bill Ayers's home. Obama immediately 
denied it and McCain had no real follow-up... It was not this year's political 
campaign that Obama began in Bill Ayers's home but an earlier campaign for the 
Illinois state legislature. Barack Obama can match Bill Clinton in slickness at 
parsing words to evade accusations... That is one way to get to the White 
House. But slickness with words is not going to help a president deal with 
either domestic economic crises or the looming dangers of a nuclear Iran."

Sowell sums it up perfectly: "Some people who see the fraud in what Obama is 
saying are amazed that others do not. But Obama knows what con men have long 
known, that their job is not to convince skeptics but to enable the gullible to 
continue to believe what they want to believe. He does that very well."
Historical Inaccuracies

Historian Sean Wilentz (on January 26, 2008) wrote: "[S]ome of the (Obama) 
presidential candidates and their surrogates have been evoking history more 
insistently than ever. Not surprisingly, those evocations often have been 
flimsy and faulty."

"The latest maiming of the historical record and elementary historical logic 
has come over Martin Luther King, Jr., Lyndon B. Johnson - and the presidential 
primaries of 2008. The media echo chamber is now booming with charges that 
Senator Hillary Clinton has disparaged Dr. King, praised President Johnson in 
his stead, and thereby distorted the history of the civil rights movement. It 
is the latest evidence, say the talking heads, that Clinton is running a subtly 
racist campaign - or, as the theology and African-American studies professor 
Michael Eric Dyson worded it on MSNBC, that she is carrying a message with an 
"an implicit racial subtext." (Sean Wilentz - from an essay in the New Republic 
- http://www.tnr.com)

"Ben Smith of Politico was among the first to stir things up, charging that 
remarks by Clinton on MLK and LBJ offered "an odd example for the argument 
between rhetoric and action" that Clinton has been making in her contest with 
Senator Barack Obama." (ibid)

By the time the charge reached Maureen Dowd's column in The New York Times on 
Wednesday, it had morphed into a false claim that Clinton actually compared 
herself to Johnson - a comparison Dowd claimed she never thought "any living 
Democrat" would do in trying to win the New Hampshire primary. (Dowd had 1968 
and Vietnam on her mind, which, unfortunately, was not the matter in dispute: 
civil rights.)" (ibid)

"Now, Representative James E. Clyburn, the most prominent African-American 
elected official from South Carolina, has picked up the ever-changing story and 
implicitly ac cused Senator Clinton of denigrating Dr. King and the civil 
rights movement. "We have to be very, very careful about how we speak about 
that era in American politics," Clyburn told The New York Times." (ibid)

So - let us very, very carefully look at that historical record. In a pair of 
television interviews earlier this week, Clinton made the uncontroversial 
historical observation that Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement 
put their lives on the line for racial equality, and that President Johnson 
enacted civil rights legislation. Her point was simple: Although great social 
changes require social movements that create hope and force crises, elected 
officials, presidents above all, are also required in order to turn those hopes 
into laws. It was, plainly, a rejoinder to the accusations by Obama that 
Clinton has sneered at "hope." Clinton was also rebutting Obama's simplistic 
assertions about "hope" and the American Revolution, the abolition of slavery, 
and the end of Jim Crow." (ibid)

The historical record is crystal clear about this, and no responsible historian 
seriously contests it. Without Frederick Douglass and the abolitionists, black 
and white (not to mention restive slaves), there would have been no agitation 
to end slavery, even after the Civil War began. But without Douglass's ally in 
the White House, the sympathetic, deeply anti-slavery but highly pragmatic 
Abraham Lincoln, there could not have been an Emancipation Proclamation or a 
Thirteenth Amendment. Likewise, without King and his movement, there would have 
been no civil rights revolution. But without the Texas liberal and 
wheeler-dealer Lyndon Johnson, and his predecessor John F. Kennedy, there would 
have been no Civil Rights Act of 1964 or Voting Rights Act of 1965." (ibid)

"Hope, in other words, is necessary to bring about change - but it is never 
enough. Change also requires effective leadership inside government. It's not a 
matter of either/or (that is, either King or Johnson), but a matter of 
both/and." (ibid)

"Behind this argument over Clinton's comments lies a false, mythic view of the 
1960s in which the civil rights movement supposedly pushed Johnson and the 
Democrats to support civil rights against their own will. In fact, the movement 
and the elected officials were distinct but complementary elements in the civil 
rights politics that changed America." (ibid)

Civil rights protests mounted gradually after 1945. By the spring of 1963, amid 
the protests in Birmingham, Alabama, a civil rights revolution was plainly 
underway, undertaken by ordinary black Americans who had outrun their own 
leadership (including Dr. King), let alone the federal government. President 
Kennedy, who had to work with a conservative Congress dominated by Southern 
senators, had initially been cool to civil rights legislation, lest it doom his 
entire presidency. But he finally embraced the cause in a momentous speech to 
the nation on June 11, 1963, which became a prelude for a major civil rights 
act to come." (ibid)

Kennedy's speechwriter, Theodore Sorensen, describes the June 11 address as a 
turning point in the history of civil rights politics as well as in JFK's 
presidency. Kennedy knew well, Sorensen observes, "that it would make other 
legislation impossible ... and he knew how much was riding on it, politically 
and historically. He knew all of that." Lyndon Johnson, perhaps as much as any 
politician of the time, understood the political and historical stakes just as 
well. As Senate Majority Leader, he had pushed through the Congress, in 1957, 
the first piece of civil rights legislation since the Reconstruction era." 
(ibid)

"Picking up the murdered Kennedy's mantle, Johnson used his mastery of 
congressional politics to push through the momentous Civil Rights Act in 1964. 
A year later, Johnson responded to the movement's battles in Selma, Alabama, by 
proposing and shepherding through to enactment the equally momentous Voting 
Rights Bill of 1965. And in June of that year, Johnson's famous commencement 
speech at Howard University launched what he called "the more profound stage of 
the battle for civil rights," which laid the foundation for affirmative action 
in hiring." (ibid)

In all of these instances, Johnson responded with political courage as well as 
sincere conviction about racial equality, but, like Kennedy (and, for that 
matter, Lincoln) before him, he also needed events to create a climate when his 
political skills could be applied. Johnson's relations with Martin Luther King 
were often tense, and the two men parted ways in 1967 over King's opposition to 
the Vietnam War. On the fundamental issues of civil rights reform, though, 
Johnson and King were in close contact and worked together as allies. And when 
Johnson, in his speech to Congress on voting rights in 1965, quoted and 
embraced the civil rights battle cry - "We Shall Overcome" - Dr. King openly 
wept. He called Johnson at the White House. "It is ironic, Mr. President," said 
King, "that after a century, a southern white President would help lead the way 
toward the salvation of the Negro."" (ibid)

"Martin Luther King led the movement; Lyndon B. Johnson supported that 
movement, played the politics, guided the legislation, and signed it into law. 
Both were indispensable to the civil rights successes of the 1960s. To 
acknowledge both denigrates neither man. Describing such an acknowledgement as 
a denigration of Dr. King is, at best, bad history. At worst, it is a 
manipulative and inflammatory racial appeal concerning a crucial era in 
American history - an era that needs very, very careful consideration indeed. 
Either way, the current heated rhetoric demonstrates that the utopia of 
post-racial politics has hardly arrived." (Sean Wilentz)
American Idol

Professor Wilentz says the misuse of history has been largely the facts about 
the presidency of Ronald Reagan and the GOP contest has at times looked like an 
"American Idol"-style competition over who can deliver the most convincing 
imitation of Reagan." He tells us the GOP debate on Jan 5 Reagan's name was 
mentioned 34 times but what was said was thin on historical accuracy.

But he also says, "[T]he more grievous grievous abuses of history, though, have 
come from the Democrats, and particularly from the Barack Obama side, including 
his many avid supporters in the media and the academy."

He said the comparisons between Obama and past presidents by the Obama campaign 
and his supporters, including some Republicans including New York Times 
columnist Nicholas Kristof who made the comparison with Lincoln saying he 
served only one term in the House before he was elected president in 1860.

"These comparisons distort the past beyond recognition. By the time he ran for 
president, JFK had served three terms in the House and twice won election to 
the Senate, where he was an active member of the Foreign Relations Committee. 
In total, he had held elective office in Washington for 14 years. Before that, 
he was, of course, a decorated veteran of World War II, having fought with 
valor in the South Pacific. Kennedy, the son of a U.S. ambassador to Britain, 
had closely studied foreign affairs, which led to his first book, "Why England 
Slept," as well as to a postwar stint in journalism." (Wilentz)

"This record is not comparable to Obama's eight years in the Illinois 
Legislature, his work as a community organizer and his single election to the 
Senate in 2004 -- an election he won against a late entrant, right-wing 
Republican Alan Keyes, in a state where the GOP was in severe disarray." (ibid)

"The Lincoln comparison is equally tortured. Yes, Lincoln spent only two years 
in the House after winning election in 1846. Yet his deep involvement in state 
and national politics began in 1832, the same year he was elected a captain in 
the Illinois militia -- and 28 years before he ran for president. He then 
served as leader of the Illinois Whig Party and served his 
far-from-undistinguished term in Congress courageously leading opposition to 
the Mexican War." (ibid)

"After returning home, he became one of the leading railroad lawyers in the 
country, emerged as an outspoken antislavery leader of Illinois' Republican 
Party -- and then, in 1858, ran unsuccessfully for the Senate and engaged with 
Stephen A. Douglas in the nation's most important debates over slavery before 
the Civil War. It behooves the champions of any candidate to think carefully 
when citing similarities to Lincoln's record. In this case, the comparison is 
absurd." (Wilentz)
Obama is no JFK

Not all the Kennedy's support Obama. Bobby Kennedy's children, Kathleen Kennedy 
Townsend, Robert F. Kennedy Jr and Kerry Kennedy all declared their support for 
Hillary Clinton. They said, "Like our father, Hillary has devoted her life to 
embracing and including those on the bottom rung of society's ladder."

Ted Kennedy said Obama is like JFK. How could Ted Kennedy be so wrong about 
history? Maybe he is just too old or maybe he has much he would like to forget?

Sean Wilentz Princeton professor Sean Wilentz and author of The Rise of 
American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln, said, Obama is no JFK: "By the time 
he ran for president, JFK had served three terms in the House and twice won 
election to the Senate...Before that, he was, of course, a decorated veteran of 
World War II, having fought with valor in the South Pacific."

Hillary Clinton challenged Barack Obama to a debate a week. She wanted to 
debate him one to one, so that everyone can really see the differences and make 
their judgment on facts, not speculation or false allegations from the Obama 
campaign. Obama refused just as he has refused to meet McCain in town hall 
meetings. He is afraid to go up against the big man. If he can't hold his own 
in this election how is he going to hold up under some real pressure if he 
should become the president?
Fantasy Based Reporting and History

         "Spreading bad history is no way to make history." (Sean Wilentz, 
professor of history at Princeton University author of "The Rise of American 
Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln," among other books)

In war, truth is the first casualty - but in politics, it appears that the 
first victim is history. (Wilentz)

"Every now and then in American politics, normally balanced people get swept up 
by delusions of greatness about a presidential candidate, based on an emotional 
attachment to the candidate's oratory or image. The youthful William Jennings 
Bryan brought down the house and swept up the nomination with his famous "Cross 
of Gold" speech at the Democratic National Convention in 1896--only to be 
crushed by the dreary William McKinley in November." (Sean Wilentz, The New 
Republic - "The Delusional Style in American Punditry" - Dec 19, 2007)

(Sean Wilentz is also a contributing editor at The New Republic, and the author 
of The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln (Norton))

"Political journalists have never been immune to the delusional style. But 
editorialists and pundits are supposed to be skeptical experts..." (Wilentz)

Unfortunately that hasn't been the case. Who can miss it? Watching the way this 
election is covered is so revealing about the nature of political punditry. 
There is very little neutrality and the way the campaign is being covered is 
harmful to democracy. They don't even try to hide their partiality. Hatred for 
the Clinton's has been obvious, most especially in on cable, CNN, MSNBC and 
even DemocracyNow. Even the outspoken Keith Obermann has been laudatory toward 
Barack Obama. Their "enthusiasm" for change has clouded their judgment. They 
have even been complicit in the cover-up of what some investigations have 
exposed in Obama's background and his connection to the Islamists in Kenya. 
Wilentz writes that this kind of reporting is not discerning, but it is,

"[I]n fact nothing more than enthusiasm, based on feelings and projections that 
are unattached to verifiable rational explanation or the public record." (ibid)

We are reminded that the same style was demonstrated by the media in the lead 
up to the last presidency, with George W. Bush, and criticized by progressives 
later. The same intuitive style devoid of facts was to no small degree 
responsible for the favorability of George W. Bush in 2000.

"Bush had a thin record on domestic matters as governor of Texas, no record 
whatsoever on foreign policy, and things to hide about his past, none of it 
mattered. As president, he has asked the American people to trust him because 
of his faith in himself and his God-given instincts--what he calls his "gut." 
For years, the Washington press corps was bowled over by such self-assurance. 
Having decided that the wonkish, reasonable Al Gore was boring and inauthentic, 
reporters covered Bush as a centered man with superb intuition." (ibid)

And that all sounds familiar for what is happening now. Obama has a thin record 
and no foreign policy experience. He has never traveled in Europe. He tells 
everyone who wants change to vote for him but change is still a nebulous idea 
with him and when he does explain his plans they are wanting, flawed and 
extremely conservative as he has been as a freshman in the senate. And it 
doesn't hurt the Democrats that he is a black man.

Professor Wilentz points out the delusional style of the Boston Globe which 
endorsed Obama "because he is biracial and grew up in "multi-ethnic 
cultures"--adequate substitutes, by the editorial's lights, for serious 
background and expertise in foreign affairs. Obama, according to the Globe, has 
engaged in "a search for identity" and taken "a roots pilgrimage to Kenya," all 
of which supposedly displays a "level of introspection, honesty, and maturity" 
that the newspaper longs for in a president. "Obama's story is America's 
story," the Globe intoned--a sentence that comes as close as any distinguished 
newspaper ever has to perfect emptiness." (Sean Wilentz)

"The pundits have vaunted good vibes and gut-thinking as the crucial 
qualifications for the nation's highest office. They have turned the delusional 
style into a rallying cry--in support, at least for the moment, of the 
candidacy of Barack Obama and his allegedly superior intuition." (Sean Wilentz)

"There are many possible explanations for this latest outbreak of the 
delusional style. An ever-intensifying cult of celebrity personality-worship, 
the more sentimental the better, may finally have overwhelmed precincts of 
political commentary. (Obama's sidekick, Oprah Winfrey, is, after all, the 
reigning master of that cult.) Democrats may simply be so battered after what 
the Globe calls "seven desolating years" that they are looking for a man on a 
white horse to deliver them from despair--and so they have invented one." 
(ibid)

Baract Obama made the assertion applauding a Republican partisan accounting of 
the Reagan and post-Reagan years which are at odds with history. Obama declared 
the Republicans has been the "party of ideas" since the Reagan presidency.

As Wilentz writes in his article in The New Republic, Obama was wrong to hold 
the Republicans up as an example of transformation which historically has been 
discredited, that he was in fact presenting as political gospel "the old (and 
long discredited) right-wing bromides repackaged as the "Contract with America" 
in 1994, the Republican attack on Medicare that led to the government shutdown 
a year later, the endless recycling of supply-side economics (especially 
ironic, given the current meltdown), and the other ideological agendas pushed 
by Newt Gingrich, Tom DeLay, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, have made the GOP 
the party of intellectual daring and innovation." (ibid)

Sean Wilentz states, "Historians cannot expect all politicians and their 
supporters to know as much about American history as, say, John F. Kennedy, who 
won the Pulitzer Prize for a work of history. But it is reasonable to expect 
respect for the basic facts -- and not contribute to cheapening the historical 
currency." (ibid)

We are also being told to "forget experience" and rely on Obama's instincts. 
Where was his instincts with his friend of 17 years, Tony Rezko, who is now in 
jail - and the low cost housing unions his friend left in such disaray he had 
to walk away from them and people were left without heat during the winter and 
Obama never noticed - or the extra lot for his $1.6 million mansion which Rezko 
sold to Obama hundreds of thousands of dollars below cost. And what did Rezko 
get for it? He got something. You can depend on it. Did Obama look the other 
way on purpose? Whatever is ultimately revealed it demonstrates a lack of good 
judgment at the very least and at the worst it implicates Obama in Rezko's 
illegalities.

John McCain is no Bush. He is a `moderate' Republican with more similarity to 
Eisenhower than to George Bush and in these times when America is threatened by 
Islamic terrorism I would rather have a McCain Republican in charge than 
someone who picks his friends and his preacher the way Obama has. 
Unfortunately, that has not been the case and I think America will suffer - and 
so will we.

Obama's biggest test so far has been the economy and he is promising a 
miraculous recovery. Here too he is misleading the American people. Here is 
what Cliff Kincaid says about Obama's selling of America to China:

"The truth is starting to seep out. Because of the need for more money to 
finance the latest bailout, the Obama economic stimulus plan. America is going 
further in debt to the Chinese Communists. Our country is officially being sold 
to the highest bidder. And we have striking confirmation of this fact from 
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. By Cliff Kincaid | February 22, 2009 - 
Accuracy in Media column .

"The truth is the Administration needs China's help. Americ's stimulus is very 
expensive and the U.S. wants China to help finance it, Andrews (of CBS news) 
reported. This is what America has become, a country that sends its Secretary 
of State abroad to beg for money from foreigners. In this case, it's a 
communist dictatorship that forces women to have abortions, tortures 
Christians, and threatens the freedom and democratic government of Taiwan." 
(ibid)

So as Cliff says, correctly so, "So the cost of the "stimulus" is more 
sacrifice of American independence and sovereignty, as well as our own values, 
ideals, and commitment to human freedom. It is a sad day both for America and 
China."

Hillary exposes America's real sacrifice. Obama can't be happy with her 
frankness. Clinton was shown saying, "We are relying on the Chinese government 
to continue to buy our debt. The almighty dollar takes precedence over 
everything else, even as it falls in value and the dangers of hyperinflation 
and national bankruptcy loom. The tragedy is compounded by the fact that 
pandering to the Chinese will not solve anything. This policy, set in motion by 
big banks and corporations and pursued by Democratic and Republican 
Administrations, is what got us into this predicament in the first place."

Hank Roth
All quoting pursuant to the Fair Use Doctrine
for educational and discussion purposes per
Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, Copyright Law.

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Today is Wednesday February 25, 2009
G 0 l e m D e s i g n s
Hank Roth (on the Internet since 1982)
Worm Hole (Home) - The Crypt - Hank Roth (Bio)

While I don't use a standard blog (weblog software) mostly because I've been 
doing this too long - having been there with Ike when the precursor to the 
Internet, Arpanet got started and every step of the way since, I can't get into 
all the many fads over the years (now it is social networking), but I have been 
an observer and participant in events which shape the world since my time with 
NSA and with Army Security and as a voice security cryptologist in the White 
House for the President, and the War Room at the Pentagon for the Chairman of 
the Chiefs of Staff plus two wars. You could say this site is one of the better 
kept secrets [grin] on the InterNUT. You are invited back as often as you would 
like to see what I and others, I trust, may be saying.
-- Hank Roth
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