Obama: the tide turns

The electoral tide is beginning to turn against the most radical extremist and most inexperienced candidate ever nominated by a major political party. Despite the attempt of the mainstream media to sell Sen. Barack Obama as a virtual Messiah, the truth is finally beginning to leak through to the public. That truth is devastating and should prove to be fatal to his candidacy, showing the would be Democratic Messiah to be a world-class phony and fraud.

Four factors started turning the election around:

* First, Sen. John McCain shifted to hard-hitting and relentless criticism in the last week, and in my view, it is no coincidence in that time that the polls showed a substantial lead by Mr. Obama disappear, and the election shifted into a deadheat. Mr. McCain is still being a little too polite and gentlemanly, but he is getting closer to the tough mode that it will take to expose Mr. Obama for the phony and total fraud that he is.

* Second, Mr. Obama played the race card when he said that the Republicans and Mr. McCain will say he has a funny name and doesn't look like the presidents on the dollar bills. Suddenly, Mr. Obama demonstrated he is not a new kind of politician. He not only demonstrated he is just another grubby campaigner, but also demonstrated he is willing to resort to the sleaziest and slimiest tactics of the race hustlers and race baiters. I don't think the American people approve of Mr. Obama calling a war hero such as Mr. McCain a racist. Mr. Obama knows his racist slander of Mr. McCain is wrong, but a Chicago-machine politician will do anything to win.

* Third, the full picture of Mr. Obama started to come together. It's easy to ignore a Reverend "God Damn America" Wright and a question mark here and there. But when Mr. Obama's record, when his programs, when his associates, when you see Mr. Obama in full with his shocking and devastating lifetime trail, then you quickly realize he is not fit to be president and is the last person in the world we might want as commander in chief. There's too much there to disregard; the record is too damning to ignore; and the facts are too stubborn and overwhelming to refute

* Fourth, the alternative media stepped up reporting on Mr. Obama and three books came out that filled in most of the missing pieces:

(A) Dick Morris and Eileen McGann hit the market first with the book Fleeced. All you have to do is read Chapter I, "President Obama: What Would He Do?" and you realize his plans would wreck our economy, destroy our health delivery system, and downgrade our national defense capability, and endanger our national security.

(B) Then came Jerome R. Corsi and his book, The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality. Mr. Corsi, who is the coauthor of Unfit for Command: Swift boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry, carefully documents Mr. Obama's history from his early days in Hawaii to the present, showing how it all points to disaster for the U.S. if elected president. The book is meticulously sourced with over 700 footnotes and makes a compelling case against Mr. Obama.

(C) Finally, David Freddoso, political reporter for the National Review Online, comes up with another searing indictment of Mr. Obama's history in a book entitled The Case Against Barack Obama: The Unlikely Rise and Unexamined Agenda of the Media's Favorite Candidate. Like Mr. Corsi's book, it is extensively sourced and footnoted and completes the ironclad case against Mr. Obama.

What has been happening is no cause for early celebration. Much remains to be done to get the word out on Mr. Obama, and that is not easy given the dishonest, fraudulent and biased mainstream media, which acts almost as a gigantic campaign manager for Mr. Obama intent on shoving him down America's electoral throat. Too much is at stake, as Mr. Obama's damage to America would be too catastrophic, so we can't leave any doubt about the outcome of the election in November. For the sake of national survival, Mr. Obama's candidacy must be smashed, as it should be and will be if the public gets the full story on Mr. Obama.

To get the word out, critics of Mr. Obama should not be intimidated by Mr. Obama's attempt to insulate himself from criticism by playing the race card. In my view, criticism should be stepped up, and it should be more factual and more extensive and less polite and less leaning-over-backwards to be kind. I find that even those you would expect to call it straight are being a little too polite and kind with their criticism. The examples that come to mind are Bill O'Reilly and Chris Wallace, both of Fox Cable News. I noticed that when they were reporting and asking questions about Mr. Obama's recent play of the race card, they were leaning over backward to justify and explain away what any reasonable person would see as a race card play, pure and simple. I'm all for being fair and balanced, but I object to the likes of Mr. O'Reilly and Mr. Wallace being so hesitant to call the shots, even if it involves damning criticism of Mr. Obama, that they end up blurring and watering down what should be tough criticism. It's sad to see a wimp and a wuss asking the questions in the no spin zone ... and doing some spinning of his own.

I have the feeling that Mr. O'Reilly and Mr. Wallace are so anxious to get Mr. Obama on their programs for interviews, that they want to be a little too gentle in their criticism.

In fact, I find most of those who should be dishing out the facts are too often taking the weak-kneed approach of Mr. O'Reilly and Mr. Wallace. There are some important exceptions that tell it like it is, such as Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Dino Costa, Hugh Hewitt, Bill Bennett, Laura Ingraham, Dennis Prager, Mike Gallagher, Thomas Sowell, Charles Krauthammer and the editorial and commentary pages of Investors' Business Daily. I should also mention the old conservative pillars such as the Wall Street Journal, the Weekly Standard and the National Review.

To give you some flavor of how the three books mentioned above make the case against Mr. Obama, I might relate the approach of Mr. Freddoso in chapter seven of his book. That chapter is entitled "The Radical Influences." He gives the kind of depth and detail about these radical influences on Mr. Obama, which generate overpowering images and impressions even though you may have picked up bits and pieces of the record in media reports.

The chapter starts with this quotation: "Everything was absolutely ideal on the day I bombed the Pentagon. The sky was blue. The birds were singing. And the bastards were finally going to get what was coming to them."

Believe it or not, that's the way a 2001 book by Mr. Obama's close friend, campaign contributor, and associate, William Ayers, starts his book entitled Fugitive Days. Mr. Freddoso writes, "Ayers writes that he and his wife shrieked with delight when they heard the news reports on the radio after the bomb [their bomb] exploded, twenty-five minutes after a telephone warning."

Mr. Ayers writes of the incident in his book, "The Pentagon was ground zero for war and conquest, organizing headquarters of a gang of murdering thieves, a colossal stain on the planet, a hated symbol everywhere around the world ... We'd already bombed the Capitol, we'd cased the White House. The Pentagon was leg two of the trifecta."

Mr. Ayers is all too typical of the friends and associates of Mr. Obama. Even Mr. Obama's chief strategist, David Axelrod, has described the Obama/Ayers relationship as "friendly."

Even now, Mr. Obama doesn't denounce Mr. Ayers but tries to dance away from Mr. Ayers' terrorism, noting that Mr. Ayers has moved beyond terrorism. But he hasn't renounced terrorism and in his most recent pronouncements was unrepentant and complained only that he didn't bomb enough. Mr. Ayers is now a respected faculty member at a respected university. But as Mr. Freddoso points out that "says a lot more about the state of academia today than it does about Obama." As this column has frequently pointed out, our colleges and universities have become centers of anti-Americanism. They are now the very kind of institutions that would give coveted faculty positions to terrorists such as Mr. Ayers and Ms. Dohrn.

Mr. Obama served on boards with Mr. Ayers, took his campaign contributions, and attended fundraisers at his house.

Mr. Freddoso asks whether you or any of your friends would be friendly with an Ayers. And should a candidate for president continue to be friendly with this terrorist? And these radical ties are not the exception, but pervade Mr. Obama's associations. Mr. Freddoso writes:

"Although they should not be overstated, Obama has many radical ties. As a teenager, he had a communist mentor who told him not to trust white people. Later, he would steep himself in the radical philosophy of community organizer [and socialist] Saul Alinsky and train others in his teachings. He would inherit his first elected office from an admirer of the USSR, and seek to placate and even sign pledges for the same kinds of radical groups she associated with, some of whom identify themselves as socialists and communists. As a candidate for president, he has chosen some extremists as political advisors and he counts some among his fundraisers."

Mr. Freddoso says that Mr. Obama's associations with Marxists and radicals may not prove he is one of them, but then concludes, "his ideological influences are decidedly radical, which is an important consideration for voters." Mr. Freddoso says the background he provides in this chapter seven of his book on radical influences is important because it helps answer the following questions he puts:

* Why does Obama associate with such people?

* What influence have they had on him?

* What do these relationships tell us about his judgment and the type of people with whom he will entrust executive powers if elected?

He spends 30 pages in answering those questions, but I think the answers are fairly obvious. He would not be immersed with radicals all his life if his thinking weren't congruent with theirs. They have had a profound influence on him, as demonstrated by his radical, socialist programs and proposals. The radical type would inhabit his cabinet and executive branch as they represent his thinking and the kind of change he thinks America needs.

In part two of this series, I'll have more on Mr. Obama and the radical influences on his life, his thinking, and his plans for America.

Herb Denenberg is a former Pennsylvania Insurance Commissioner, Pennsylvania Public Utility Commissioner, and professor at the Wharton School. He is a longtime Philadelphia journalist and consumer advocate. He is also a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of the Sciences. His column appears daily in The Bulletin. You can reach him at [email protected].