Pinocchiobama

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  • 03/02/2023

[Editor’s Note: Today, we’re beginning a new column: “RedState Under the Radar,” written by RedState’s editor and chairman, Erick Erickson. We think you’ll enjoy his coverage of important political stories you won’t see elsewhere.]

Barack Obama seeks to portray himself as a new type of politician. He wants to lead us, he says, with hope for the future, change in the present and repudiation of the past eight years so that America can exchange the failed policies of the last eight years for those of the past one hundred years, He seeks, if you will, to transcend politics. But if you were to take an objective look at Obama, you could reasonably conclude that Obama transcends politics by making the typical politician appear more honest. With each passing day, a new lie springs forth from Obama’s mouth causing university professors and ivy league graduates to faint at the non-truth that affirms their world view.

In 1996, Barack Obama’s campaign responded to a questionnaire by indicating that Obama favored bans of the manufacturing and selling of guns, opposed parental notification of abortions for minors, and opposed the death penalty. When asked about that, Obama threw his campaign staff under the bus, claiming the staff had sent in the questionnaire. He issued a blanket denial that he had ever held those positions. Except that is not true. As RedState noted, a review of the actual document shows “that [Obama] reviewed the answers closely enough to revise some of the answers in his own handwriting.”

On Afghanistan, Barack Obama claims to be the only politician willing to re-engage the Taliban. He faults the Bush Administration for depleting the number of military personnel in Afghanistan and claims we need to increase the number of ground forces to 92,000 troops, something Obama says the Bush administration is opposed to. Funny how Secretary of Defense Robert Gates offered the exact same policy prescription and number of troops back in 2007.

On Iraq, Obama accuses John McCain of wanting a one hundred year war in Iraq. Speaking on MSNBC’s Hardball, Obama said, “John McCain got upset today apparently because I had repeated exactly what he said, which is that we might be there [Iraq] for 100 years if he had his way.” Only, that is another lie. As RedState documented, the Washington Post’s FactCheck, the Annenberg Public Policy Center’s nonpartisan FactCheck.org, and the Columbia Journalism Review all report Obama’s words were grossly misleading. The Annenberg Public Policy Center called Obama’s statement a “serious distortion to the point of rank falsehood.”

Obama’s latest lie is, to the paragons of political virtue, perhaps his worst. Campaigning in Pennsylvania, Obama is running a television ad in which he says, "I’m Barack Obama. I don’t take money from oil companies or Washington lobbyists, and I won’t let them block change anymore." That’s not exactly true. First, no candidate can take money from oil companies; corporations are prohibited from giving money. Corporations can, however, give a maximum contribution of $5,000.00 to a candidate via a political action committee (“PAC”). Obama has not received that $5,000.00. Instead, he has taken in $213,000.00 from individuals who work for oil companies. While Chevron could have only given him $5,000.00 through its PAC, Obama took in $9,500.00 from Chevron employees. That $213,000.00 total from oil company employees does not even include the money from lobbyists Obama took but claims he did not take.

Whether lying about his resume, quitting smoking, or what he did or did not know about Reverend Wright, Barack Obama is telling the truth on one issue: he is not your typical politician. A typical politician could never have told as many lies as Barack Obama and been given a free pass by the traditional media.

Here are a few other blogger-generated stories you’d never hear about if you relied on the traditional media. Click the name of the state for the full story:

TENNESSEE:

Lynn Lang, a football coach in Memphis, TN, plead guilty to charges that he received $150,000.00 in cash to steer a student to the University of Alabama. Lang also accepted a ban from coaching for life and surrendered his teaching license. Subsequently, Lang moved to Michigan, applied for a job, failed to list his felony guilty plea on the application, and was then fired (or at least forced to resign) once the felony was discovered. Lang went back to Tennessee and the Tennessee Board of Education promptly reinstated him.

OKLAHOMA:

Since the passage of H.B. 1804, Oklahoma’s anti-illegal immigration bill, the state has seen a mass exodus of illegal immigrants. Widely hailed as the toughest bill of its kind in the nation, Oklahoma’s Chamber of Commerce, the Oklahoma Bankers Association, oil companies, and others have quietly tried to repeal the measure with a good number of co-conspirators in the media as well as Andres Chao, Mexico’s Consul based in Little Rock, AR. Unfortunately for this group, local bloggers and anti-illegal immigration activists shined some light on their activities and their movement is collapsing.

NEW MEXICO:

Bernalillo County District Attorney Kari Brandenburg seeks re-election this year. Voters might want to think twice about that. Brandenburg sparked controversy a while back by prosecuting law abiding, decorated Marine who shot and killed a car thief caught in the act of stealing the Marine’s car in the Marine’s driveway. The thief was high on cocaine at the time and had two prior convictions. The Marine was ordered to pay restitution to the thief’s family and sent to prison for two years. Now, Brandenburg is prosecuting a university student who took down a Mexican flag flying over the University of New Mexico’s administration building without an accompanying American flag (a violation of the U.S. Flag Code). The student faces six months in jail and a $500.00 fine.

COLORADO:

Republican Rima Barakat Sinclair running for Denver’s House District 6 is being accused by opponents of being “a terror apologist . . . with no credible conservative credentials.” Naturally, Ms. Sinclair says this is mudslinging because of her Muslim descent. But Ms. Sinclair was caught on tape saying, “Israeli soldiers now are known to be just bombing and killing babies” and is on the steering committee of a questionable organization called Muslims Intent on Learning and Action.

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