Obama '08?

In the least, it appears he did lie. About more than one thing. If he did, it was a needless lie. Makes one wonder how far he'd go if a lie HAD been needed.

Source for previous article

Indeed he does. In my haste to defend one of the few politicos I have any faith left in, I assumed that Sierra was making a clever insult. Doubly embarrassing is the fact that I've actually read Obama's book, and should really have known better.

I apologize for what I said about smarmy and reaching, Sierra Song.

But if you intend to continue reworking my pseudoname Lash (SnoodWrong), I take it you won't have any objection to others doing likewise to yours.

If you can come up with anything as cute, appropriate and innocuous as SnoodWrong, be my guest.

I could do that, easily. "Keep the baby, faith"

PROTEST!!!! <black power fist jammed in the air, you know, in a militant kind of way>

sierrasong wrote



blatham wrote;

lash wrote:

And if his middle name was Joseph or Fred we can be certain SierraSong would have taken the time to appraise us of that. I'm certain because every time she writes anyone's name here, she always adds that essential middle part. Always.

Pretty much... I thought that was what Snood meant, too.

That was my guess.

I still wonder what the "slime" is. Hussein is his name. What exactly do you say she's guilty of? Is he guilty of Moslemnity...she, of revealing his Moslem middle name... you, of trying to overstep the larger truth---that he lied about a few things in his background for a more glowy speech...

Flesh out your charge, if you will.

Sierra-- I'd be interested to know what you were thinking when you included his name. Curious about all this unspoken maneuvering.

I would most likely never vote for someone named Hussein, probably an illegal alien to begin with and even more likely an african. Would be like voting for a woman. Does he have papers? Is he a protestant? Is he white? Anyone with a name other than "John" is in deep cereal in my estimation.
Vote Early
vote often
vote Kucinich.

I guess what you call "unspoken maneuvering", Lash, is what Blatham called "sliming".

"Unspoken manoevring" = Bringing things up that will make someone sound bad, without actually fleshing any charge out about it. Just kinda sneaking something in that will ensure some kind of negative connotation, while making sure you havent actually said anything that you can be pinned down on. = "Sliming".

Works for me.

----------------

Re your longer post, dont want to seem to be ignoring it. I've read it, dont really know what to make of it.

It looks like some lifestory-fudging has gone on, indeed. Which is unsympathetic, all the more so since like you said, he didnt even have to. (In that sense its different from the Hirsi Ali story that broke in Holland last month, see here and on from there.)

I'm sure we'll hear plenty more about it.

But for now I also remain sceptical. The author says he did his own research to get to his findings, but there's no actual references anywhere. There's nothing we have to go on except the take of "a fellow columnist for Political Gateway, Andy Martin", who even this guy basically dismisses as overtly partisan, and this guy's own take.

He brings a lot of info, so that pleads for his cred; so does the fact that the rest of his site shows he's not some hating conservative.

But the whole site and a random browse of the other texts there ("15 Things Learned About Bush&Co.: An Impeachment List", and the like) gives off an impression of amateurism and dilettantism. Of someone who's just rather far-out. The rest of his site (its basically just him, right? Leftie columnist and (talk radio?) host of "The Bud Beck Show"?) just doesnt look very serious or credible a source.

I'm sceptical because we've seen a lot of candidates burnt down by smears that, if you only listened to the one indvidual's purported story, seemed real enough, and there seemed to be little, if you werent knowledgeable about the topic yourself, to bring in against it. But then as the story was fact-checked and analysed, turned out to be a patchwork of insinuation, outright lies and at best, selective representation of what really happened. (Yes, this is the category I put the Swift Vets for Truth in).

Basically, others make it a rule to distrust anything the mainstream media say; I make it a rule to approach with skepticism anything that looks like it could have been penned by a loonie in the attic. Not saying this guy is one, this particular text seemed sorta reasonable enough, but the rest of his site sure looks the part. So I'm waiting for some more serious source to pick this up. Then I'll form an opinion about the actual questions this guy raised. ;-)

Talk about maneuvering. I for one either didn't know or had forgotten that was his middle name and had no clue why it was inserted. How many of the rest of you want to be honest and raise you hand?

here.

Really? Then you have a lot to learn, grasshopper

Well, for the record--I think it would have been slimy if SierraSong had alluded to something damaging that wasn't true. This is a bit related to Kerry's outing of Mary Cheney....but I thought his was slimy, though of course, she IS a lesbian.

I guess a name even with a negative connotaion, isn't as bad as an outing.

Dunno.

Peanut gallery?

(interested in the bipartisan discussion behind this nuanced politicking.)

That article gave me the creeps. I'm glad to see it, I think it's instructive. I hadn't thought of the "He's secretly Muslim" card, how perfectly slimy. I understand that this guy mentions it by way of discounting it -- I don't know enough about this yet to figure out if he was sincere.

I'm suspicious of the article because of various rhetorical devices. He keeps using the phrase "goat-herder," when that's not what Obama said -- he just said that he grew up herding goats. This is indeed ambiguous -- it could mean that his occupation was goat-herder, or it could mean that it was something he did occasionally. If I say, "I was born and raised in a small town in Minnesota. I grew up picking wild blueberries and swimming in spring-fed lakes," does that mean blueberry-picking and swimming was all I did, or that those were a couple of the activities I did that were particular to the small town in Minnesota -- especially as a set-up to contrasting where I ended up?

Because the guy later on says yep, Obama Sr. DID herd goats. It's not all he did, but he did it.

The structure (set it up as a lie, then oh by the way) makes me suspicous.

Same with "immigrant." Obama said his father was a "foreign student." It's the author of that article who puts these words in his mouth: "Barack Obama's father, it turns out, was never a lowly 'immigrant'." Why the quotes? He wasn't an immigrant? He wasn't a foreign student?

The "Moslem"/ "it's not really an African name" stuff is also eyebrow-raising. It is completely immaterial to the point of this passage:



The point is that it's a weird, obviously foreign name, but his parents had faith that it wouldn't cripple his chances in America. African or Muslim makes no difference there.

Which is not going into whether it can be both. I did a quick search for "Barack Africa -Obama" and there seemed to be a lot of Africans (and not many non-Africans) in the results. There are plenty of names that are both Christian and American, for example. If someone was born in Japan to a Japanese and American parent and was named "Mary," would she be more likely to make a speech to people saying it's an American name or a Christian name?

Anyway, lots of things like that that make me suspicious, but we'll see.

Certainly interesting as an indicator of what we're likely to see if he does become a candidate.

I seek not to know all the answers... only to understand the questions...
Keep teaching me Master Nimh...

Yes, Soz makes a good point. I had the same reaction - thats why I went looking what was on the rest of this guy's site, to see whether he was genuine when he writes that he, too, was among the ones cheering Obama at first, etc - because something in the way he sets up his argument made me suspicious of these claims.

I cant put my finger on what, exactly. But basically my suspicion came from how the way the guy sets up his article reminds me of how two cops might interrogate a suspect by playing this good cop-bad cop routine. This guy brings up a fellow-columnist's obviously rather wild (and wildly rhetorical) claims (bad cop) - and does so in some detail, only to follow up with saying that, you know, he personally doesnt believe all that, of course, himself (good cop) - instead providing an alternate demasque of Obama that in comparison with the ranter will sound relatively moderate, even if it aims to achieve the same thing. Only to then bring up the next point that the "bad cop" alleges again, in detail, and provide a 'cleaned-up' version of that. Etc.

This guy might well be the genuine deal, a frustrated leftie who thought he'd found the real good guy and again got disappointed when he dug in. But the above set-up is a pretty familiar and tired strategem even of much more serious media (<cough>Fox<cough), to a) be able to bring up and quote some wild ranter that otherwise would never have gotten airspace ("I dont personallly agree with this guy, but what he is saying, is..") and b) pass off a cleaned-up version of same as neutral or credible by passing yourself off as "really", one of their own (you know, the "I used to vote Democrat myself, but.." line). So thats another reason I'm sceptical.

But, waiting...

O'Bill - LOL!