Moonage Political Webdream

Barack Obama’s campaign has been all about “change“.  However, one thing seems bound not to change if Obama is elected.  Whereas we’ve had to deal with nucular, internets, and global warmings, now we’ll get muddled facts instead of words:

• Marking the anniversary of the March 1965 “Bloody Sunday” in Selma, Ala., Obama, speaking at a church, said his parents got together “because of what happened in Selma.” Obama was born in 1961.
• Obama told Larry King on CNN — asked about that anti-Hillary Rodham Clinton YouTube ad, a doctored version of a spot created for Apple computers — “We don’t have the technical capacity to create something like that.” ( He’s a US Senator, he has the capacity.  For that matter, I do too. )
• “In case you missed it, this week, there was a tragedy in Kansas. Ten thousand people died - an entire town destroyed,” the Democratic presidential candidate said in a speech to 500 people packed into a sweltering Richmond art studio for a fundraiser.  ( it was actually 11 people. )
• And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.” ( Speaking about small-town people.  Scratch the NASCAR vote.  Shortly after, CNN would do a hit piece on voters in Kentucky inferring they were all racist because they didn’t vote for the guy who claimed they were bitter. )
• “It is wonderful to be back in Oregon,” Obama said. “Over the last 15 months, we’ve traveled to every corner of the United States. I’ve now been in 57 states? I think one left to go. Alaska and Hawaii, I was not allowed to go to even though I really wanted to visit, but my staff would not justify it.”
• “On this Memorial Day, as our nation honors its unbroken line of fallen heroes — and I see many of them in the audience here today – our sense of patriotism is particularly strong.”  — Barack Obama, Memorial Day 2008.
• Recently there is some confusion over Obama citing his uncle liberating Auschwitz.  That creates all kinds of issues.  The video is muddled and hard to understand.  However, a much clearer version of the same story was given in 2002: “My grandfather signed up for a war the day after Pearl Harbor was bombed, fought in Patton’s army. He saw the dead and dying across the fields of Europe; he heard the stories of fellow troops who first entered Auschwitz and Treblinka. He fought in the name of a larger freedom, part of that arsenal of democracy that triumphed over evil, and he did not fight in vain.”  Problems here, 1. The US never entered Auschwitz.  It was abandoned by the Germans and occupied by Russia.  In fact, the US never got close to Auschwitz as it’s in Poland.  Treblinka had been abandoned two years before.  I doubt bodies were still laying around.  2.  His only possible uncles would be Kenyan.  3. In 2002, it was his grandfather, in 2008 his uncle.

Now, the problem I see Obama working himself into is he seems to do best when speaking about nothing particular.  Being a candidate of change means nothing.  There is nothing concrete about “change”.  However, when he speaks about specifics of that “change”, he gets them wrong an awful lot.  And, what’s even more curious is when he gets them wrong, he sometimes has no problem sticking with them.  Now, Bush has been trashed for eight years for mangling words.  It’s never been questioned whether he was being truthful or not in his manglings.  Obama speaks fluently, but gets facts wrong, way wrong sometimes.  Which would you think is worse?  I mean, how often did we hear “Bush lied, people died” when they couldn’t exactly figure out what the lie was?  Obama is apparently giving those same people all kinds of reason to shout him down.  But, outside of the expected conservative/Republican blogs and a snippet or two from Fox, that’s about it.  Wonder why that is?

Technorati Tags: 57 states, alabama, anti-immigrant, anti-trade, antipathy, auschwitz, barack obama, bitter, bushism, cnn, eleven, fallen, germany, grandfather, guns, hero, kansas, larry king, memorial, poland, religion, richmond, russia, selma, sixth sense, ten thousand, treblinka, uncle, virginia

Tags: 57 states, alabama, anti-immigrant, anti-trade, antipathy, auschwitz, barack obama, bitter, bushism, cnn, eleven, fallen, germany, grandfather, guns, hero, kansas, larry king, memorial, poland, religion, richmond, russia, selma, sixth sense, ten thousand, treblinka, uncle, virginia

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