Candidate File: Obama, Barack H.

Rumormongering

Source: Slate
Link: http://www.slate.com/id/2193798
Title: "The Truth About Barack Obama", by Christopher Beam
Date: June 17, 2008

Christopher Beam reiterates the argument that attempting to combat the smear myths aimed at Barack Obama tends instead to reinforce them, "no matter how persuasively they've been refuted". Exploiting the idea, Beam suggests some rumors that might help Obama if injected into the political dialogue. A brief sampling:

Barack Obama is a DEVOUT CHRISTIAN. His favorite book is the BIBLE, which he has memorized. His name means HE WHO LOVES JESUS in the ancient language of Aramaic. He is PROUD that Jesus was an American.

Barack Obama goes to church every morning. He goes to church every afternoon. He goes to church every evening. He is IN CHURCH RIGHT NOW.

Barack Obama's new airplane includes a conference room, a kitchen, and a MEGACHURCH.

Barack Obama's skin is the color of AMERICAN SOIL.

(Beam)
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I have just been angered by Barrak's constant statements of how he why change things,
"I will change washington's wasteful spending"
"I will change the war in Iraq"
"I will change the unemployment status"

Well I can say I can change the fact that humans can't walk on water but does that make it true? no

This man has presented absolutly no plans to accomplish his statemnets. He has no exit plan in Iraq except a time limit. You can't jsut leave in 16 months then all the progress was made in vain becasue the region will destabilize and we will have yet another tyrannical dictator take power.
At least when John Macain goes to town halls he describes his Iraq plan. He states wheat ares he bleives need to be reienforced and what regions can become self governing proviences. He also asesses the various threats Iraq will face and from what region they pertain too.
Barrack has said he will leave Iraq. Sounds like a comprehensive plan and is very similar to the Bush exit strategy.

It would just be nice if when Barrack makes a promise he will change something, he acctually submits a plan on how to do so because I already knew that we wanted to change the fact that we were in Iraq, I was more focused on how we are going to do it.
 
Sci-guy 'I have just been angered by Barrak's constant statements of how he why change things,
"I will change washington's wasteful spending"
"I will change the war in Iraq"
"I will change the unemployment status" '

That's not just a misquote- that's putting words into someone's mouth. For instance, if I posted this:

I have just been angered by Sci-guy's constant statements of why he is afraid of change (I'll use % % here as mis-quote marks)

Sci-guy:
%I's afraid we could all end up differnt, like Europeans n stuff%
%If that war over in Eye-rack just stops before them ferners say 'uncle', we're gonna look bad%
%We can't be wrong, an we need a Preznit who's McSame as Dubya, and lives the dream%
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When you actually use quotes here, particularly if your quotes are outrageous, please have the decency to provide your source. Otherwise, you give the impression that you're full of shit. And welcome to SciForums.
 
Over at Consortium News, Robert Parry takes a look at how the major-media lens is influencing perceptions of Obama:

On Monday, Obama gave a detail-rich speech on how he would address the energy crisis, which is a major point of concern among Americans. From ideas for energy innovation to retrofitting the U.S. auto industry to conservation steps to limited new offshore drilling, Obama did what he is often accused of not doing, fleshing out his soaring rhetoric.

McCain responded with a harsh critique of Obama’s calls for more conservation, claiming that Obama wants to solve the energy crisis by having people inflate their tires. McCain’s campaign even passed out a tire gauge marked as Obama’s energy plan.

For his part, McCain made clear he wanted to drill for more oil wherever it could be found and to build many more nuclear power plants.

These competing plans offered a chance for the evening news to address an issue of substance that is high on the voters’ agenda. Instead, NBC News anchor Brian Williams devoted 30 seconds to the dueling energy speeches, without any details and with the witty opening line that Obama was “refining” his energy plan.

So, instead of dealing with a serious issue in a serious way, NBC News ignored the substance and went for a clever slight against Obama, hitting his political maneuvering in his softened opposition to more offshore drilling.

Williams’s quip fit with one of the press corps’ favorite campaign narratives, Obama’s flip-flopping. But the coverage ignored far more important elements of the story, such as the feasibility of Obama’s vow that “we must end the age of oil in our time”
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No matter the directness and detail of Obama's addressing of the greatest problems of our times such as energy and Iraq, the major media persists in distracting USAmericans with yellow-journalism superficiality.

Obama’s attempts to offer a more subtle explanation of what had occurred in Iraq – that key reasons for the declining violence actually predated the “surge” – were treated with bafflement by the interviewers, who simply reframed their questions and came back at him in a show of toughness against Obama’s supposed evasions.

CBS News anchor Katie Couric started this pattern, but others fell smartly in line, including NBC’s Tom Brokaw on “Meet the Press.” Indeed, many of the same media stars who had cheered the nation to war in 2003 (such as Brokaw) were now hectoring Obama, who had spoken out against the invasion in real time.

Conversely, McCain is never challenged about his misjudgment in advocating a rapid pivot from Afghanistan to Iraq in late 2001 and early 2002, before Osama bin Laden and other top al-Qaeda were captured and before Afghanistan had stabilized.

That premature pivot now stands as one of the biggest military blunders in U.S. history, leaving American troops bogged down in two open-ended wars and allowing the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks to regroup and to plot in safe havens inside Pakistan.
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The cheerleading for denial and superficiality by US major media should not be mistaken for a conspiracy- It is the spontaneous behavior of a self-stimulating and self-congratulating society. We've been regressing into the intellectual apathy of affluenza, where base emotional appeals are all that bring collective response. We are becoming a nation unaccustomed to critical collective thinking, and our major media reflects this deplorable and dangerous state.

When American news consumers aren’t hearing misinformation, they’re almost surely hearing trivia. The TV news shows couldn’t resist endlessly repeating McCain’s attack ad that compared Obama and his enthusiastic reception in Berlin to misbehaving celebrities Britney Spears and Paris Hilton.

Though the juxtaposition was clearly meant to demean – and reminded some political observers of the “call me” ads of a sexy white woman whispering to black Tennessee Senate candidate Harold Ford – McCain’s campaign insisted it was all in good fun.

While some pundits did take note of McCain’s detour onto the low road, others picked up McCain’s campaign theme that Obama is a “presumptuous” elitist who looks down on others.

That powerful attack line, which touches on the grievances of working-class whites who feel that some blacks have gotten unfair advantages from affirmative action, is at the heart of modern American racism.
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I think it's also at the heart of age-old right-wing anti-intellectualism, that plays so well to audiences short on ideas, but inundated with fear and loathing.

[The Washington Post’s Dana] Milbank wrote: “Inside [the caucus], according to a witness, [Obama] told the House members, ‘This is the moment . . . that the world is waiting for,’ adding: ‘I have become a symbol of the possibility of America returning to our best traditions.’"

However, other people who attended the caucus complained that Milbank had yanked the words out of context to support his “presumptuous” thesis, not to reflect what Obama actually said.

Rep. Jim Clyburn, D-South Carolina, said Obama’s comment was “in response to what one of the [House] members prefaced the question by,” a reference to the crowd of 200,000 that turned out to hear Obama speak in Berlin.

According to Clyburn, Obama “said, ‘I wish I could take credit for that, but I can't. Because it's not about me. It's about America. It's about the people of Germany and the people of Europe looking for a new hope, new relationships, as we go forward in the world.’ So, he expressly said that it's not about me.”

A House Democratic aide sent an e-mail to Fox News saying, “Lots of people are reading the quote about Obama being a symbol and getting it wrong. His entire point of that riff was that the campaign IS NOT about him.

“The Post left out the important first half of the sentence, which was something along the lines of: ‘It has become increasingly clear in my travel, the campaign, that the crowds, the enthusiasm, 200,000 people in Berlin, is not about me at all. It’s about America. I have just become a symbol …’”

So, it appears that Obama’s attempt to show humility was transformed into its opposite, establishing that, as Capehart put it, Obama is an “uppity” black man.
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The coming election will be fateful, and will indicate whether USAmericans are capable of breaking out of the dangerous GIGO-cycle of junk infotainment and our collective choices: Garbage In, Garbage Out.

Given the persistent superficiality – and cowardice – of the major U.S. news media, there’s even the larger question of whether a meaningful democracy can survive when the public is so thoroughly misinformed.
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We may never escape this cycle that is dumbing-down the USA, unless at some point of crisis, and absent an authoritarianist groundswell, USAmericans do get mad enough about being deceived to turn away from infotainment, and instead open our minds to the bigger picture.
 
is barak hussein obama already a president?


When asked about his stance on abortion, the Republican candidate declared he opposed abortion "from the moment of conception".

"I will be a pro-life president and this presidency will have pro-life policies. That's my commitment to you," he said to applause.

who would vote for a cocky son of a bitch like that for a president? how many cocky decisions he will make as a president then?
 
spock said:
is barak hussein obama already a president?


When asked about his stance on abortion, the Republican candidate declared he opposed abortion "from the moment of conception".

"I will be a pro-life president and this presidency will have pro-life policies. That's my commitment to you," he said to applause.

who would vote for a cocky son of a bitch like that for a president? how many cocky decisions he will make as a president then?
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What ?
 
So, who will be VP? It sounds like they will announce this week, before friday. I would be very happy with Joe Biden.
 
So uh... is that Spock calling McCain a cocky son of a bitch and asking who would vote for him?
 
The McCain campaign's "strategy" of inventing a fictional cartoon character vaguely resembling his opponent, then attacking him instead of the real man he is running against is reminiscent of both Bush campaigns.

It's also reminiscent of five year-olds on the playground laughing at the new kid.

His mindless tripe is just a nanometer beyond calling him a "retard," "gay," and so on. Sadly, if he did descend to such name calling, it seems it would probably work.

:(

I have seriously considered leaving America, if any other country would have me.
 
i cant believe my sister wants to vote for Obama.

"its time America has a black president" she said. :(
 
Which makes the Democratic choice of Obama all that more compelling. We know we would be father ahead if he were white.
 
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