2008 Election CoverUps

Fact-Checking Barack Obama

August 2008

The mainstream Media won't do it. Someone has to.

By Andrew Peterson
For CoverUps.com

Since the American mainstream media is too besotted with Barack Obama to report skeptically on him, the task falls to bloggers and the conservative media.

Daily Mail Blogger Don Surber shows how it's done, demonstrating that there's plenty of low-hanging fruit to be had for enterprising reporters.

Case in point, Barack's Berlin speech. As Surber writes, "Let me count the factual errors..."

Obama:

At the height of the Cold War, my father decided, like so many others in the forgotten corners of the world, that his yearning - his dream - required the freedom and opportunity promised by the West. And so he wrote letter after letter to universities all across America until somebody, somewhere answered his prayer for a better life.

Surber:

Um no.

Not hardly. His father’s education had nothing to do with the Cold War, but everything to do with post-colonial African politics.

Wikipedia said:

Due to a program offering Western educational opportunities to outstanding Kenyan students that was organized by nationalist leader Tom Mboya, Obama Sr. was awarded a scholarship in economics, and at the age of 23 he enrolled at the University of Hawaii. He left behind a pregnant Kezia and their infant son.

The simplistic nature of Obama's thinking is an amazing thing. From his father's travels, on to the complex evolution of Berlin's fortunes during and after World War II, Barack paints his picture with a brush so wide it can't fit on the canvas. Worlds of detail and context are lost.

Obama:

This city, of all cities, knows the dream of freedom. And you know that the only reason we stand here tonight is because men and women from both of our nations came together to work, and struggle, and sacrifice for that better life.

Surber:

No, America and Germany hooked up not because of freedom, but rather a little thing called World War II. Germany tried to take over Europe. We helped stop the Germans and conquered Germany. Berlin was pretty much rubble.

By the time he turns his attention to September 11th and the War on Terror, we are accustomed to the broad brush strokes of Obama's narratives – and to the fact that in each of the examples he uses to illustrate his points, these wide brush strokes are used to cover over anything that makes the United States look too good, or too special.

Obama:

The terrorists of September 11th plotted in Hamburg and trained in Kandahar and Karachi before killing thousands from all over the globe on American soil.

Surber:

While there were a few foreigners among the 3,000 people who were murdered on 9/11, most of the victims were Americans. He left out the part where the hijackers were, like his father, foreign students in the USA. They trained in Florida as well.

Barack is obsessed with walls. Again and again he turns to them as metaphors in his speeches, even when it makes no sense to do so.

Obama:

The walls between old allies on either side of the Atlantic cannot stand. The walls between the countries with the most and those with the least cannot stand. The walls between races and tribes; natives and immigrants; Christian and Muslim and Jew cannot stand. These now are the walls we must tear down.

Surber:

What walls? France has replaced the aider and abettor of Hussein, Jacques Chirac, with L’Americain, Nikolas Sarkozy. For the first time, NATO is engaged in a mission outside of Europe as NATO fights in Afghanistan. Obama’s worldview is stuck in 2002.

Our Take

The political success of Barack Obama is a monument to the failure of the mainstream media to do its job. From the outset of his campaign they have shown little interest in applying the kind of basic journalistic scrutiny – of Obama's ideas, his personal history, his grasp of world history – that voting public needs to make a sound judgment about him. There has been no vetting process.

Luckily the alternative media has stepped up to the plate – and the vetting is taking place. With the predictable result that Obama is sinking in the polls.

Link to article.