Keep Your Eyes on the Ball

If we don't hold the line now, we can kiss it all goodbye

This election is reaching critical mass. I can’t bear to surf through the news channels with the volume on, for fear of my tympanum hammer cracking my eardrum. The political pundits have long since given up any semblance of journalistic integrity, and it’s really come down to a shouting match as the countdown to Election Day marches closer like the doomsday clock.

I think the Republicans know what’s coming their way, and it does not bode well for them. There’s an undercurrent of political awareness rising in America, something that I haven’t seen in my 21 years of voter eligibility. It’s like people know what’s at stake, and are going the extra mile to insure this country doesn’t lose at the table for another 8 years.

Also, the eyes of the world are on us as well. Looking over the international blogs, I see that there probably isn’t a country out there that isn’t holding it’s breath to see who’s going to be left standing when the dust settles on Nov. 4^th.

In the recent months, a lot of information has surfaced in an overwhelming method, casting doubt and uncertainty in both candidate’s directions. This was done in a kind of tsunami method, what we in computer engineering call a “Packet Storm”, where information is flooded throughout the network faster and in greater bulks than the pipes can assimilate it.

This is a kind of combat tactic, hitting you from so many different directions that you can’t focus on what the objective is. It’s damn near impossible for Joe Paycheck to have a complete grasp of what’s true and what’s not in the short amount of time before the elections. So, to help you out, I’ve done the homework for you.

I’m only going to focus on Barack Obama, because frankly, I don’t give a rat’s ass about McCain. It has been researched, examined and reported to the very best of my analytical abilities and journalistic integrity. And unlike Fox News, I can guarantee my sources…And projections.

So, if you have any uncertainties about the things you have heard during the past year and a half, particularly since February, let me give you the abridged version:

1: Barack Obama is a Muslim, was once a Muslim, or follows the religion of Islam. Obama’s political handlers are attempting to make it appear that he is not a Muslim radical.

FALSE!

Barack Obama never stated that he "was once a Muslim" (radical or otherwise), so his "handlers" have nothing to conceal. Barack Obama has been a member of the United Church of Christ since the mid-1980s, describes himself as a Christian, and says that he is "rooted in the Christian tradition."

2: Barack Obama went to a Muslim school as a child.

TRUE and FALSE

This is actually a “spin statement" Barack Obama's parents separated when he was two years old, and four years later his mother married Lolo Soetoro, an Indonesian oil manager. Barack and his mother moved to Jakarta, Indonesia, where Obama spent 4-5 years attending both Muslim and Catholic schools before his mother sent him back to the United States to live with his maternal grandmother. The school Barack Obama attended in Indonesia was "Muslim" primarily in the sense that the preponderance of its student body was Muslim (because Indonesia is a predominantly Muslim country), but both the Muslim and Catholic schools he attended in Indonesia offered a few hours of religious instruction each week. You can read the CNN report about it HERE And another HERE

3: Obama was sworn into office of the U.S. Senate using a Koran, not a Bible.

FALSE!

Obama was sworn in with a Bible. Because he’s a Christian. In fact, there’s even a picture of it. Senator Kieth Ellison was sworn in with a Koran, and the media likes to confuse the two. Probably because they’re both black. By the way, Ellison was sworn in with Thomas Jefferson’s copy of the Koran… Turns out Mr. Jefferson was a big fan of Muslims and their religious writings. How d’ya like THEM apples?

4: Obama won’t say the pledge of allegiance

FALSE!

Someone took a photo of Obama without his hand over his heart during what APPEARS to be a pledge session, and circulated a rumor that he refuses to pledge allegiance to the flag. However, there are two blatant pitfalls with this:

1: This was a photo, not a video. We have no idea WHEN the photo was snapped. What was the timing? Just before the pledge? Just after? During? Was it a pledge of allegiance, or something else entirely? Notice that there is no SEQUENCE of photos, just one quick snapshot.

2: If this were true, we’d be seeing HUNDREDS of photos, and there would be THOUSANDS of witnesses. The U.S. Senate ALONE would have a field day with his ass on that one. Also, Obama has publicly stated that this was false, and he does indeed swear allegiance like everyone else, including the hand-over-heart bit. If his convictions were so strong that he publicly refused to swear allegiance, then he would also publicly STATE such.

There are, however, pictures (hundreds) and videos (dozens) of him pledging allegiance.

5: Obama’s Church Pastor is a Racist Who Hates America

FALSE!

Rev. Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr came under scrutiny after a snippet of one of his sermons was used as a soundbite for electoral media. Obama's pastor was quoted saying blacks should not sing "God Bless America" but "God damn America." There are several other quotes taken both in and out of context used to paint a damning picture of the man. The few snippets of sermons broadcast ad nauseam hardly tell the whole story.

Rev. Wright is an undeniably provocative speaker who, in the long tradition of American preachers, proudly and often indiscriminately uses hyperbole to communicate his point. He is unabashed about mixing his faith with his politics and he is unafraid of being provocative to the point of being offensive. His view of the world is often a dark one but it is balanced by a shining belief that people can win the fight against oppression.

As a young community organizer, Obama found inspiration in Rev. Wright’s message of using social work and political activism to liberate poor African Americans from their current state of despair. The message was so powerful that it propelled Obama onto a religious path and led to his eventual conversion from agnostic to Christian. Rev. Wright married Obama and his wife Michelle, and baptized their two daughters and is credited by Obama for the title of his book, "The Audacity of Hope."

Rev. Wright’s most famous and controversial sermon contained this quote, which was used by many media outlets to cast a racist shadow over Barack Obama’s campaign:

"The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing 'God Bless America.' No, no, no, God damn America, that's in the Bible for killing innocent people," he said in a 2003 sermon. "God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme."

In addition to damning America, he told his congregation on the Sunday after Sept. 11, 2001 that the United States had brought on al Qaeda's attacks because of its own terrorism. "We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye," Rev. Wright said in a sermon on Sept. 16, 2001.

"We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards. America's chickens are coming home to roost," he told his congregation.

Obama’s first book, “Audacity to Hope” was titled after a sermon he attended with the Rev. Wright. The full transcript can be found HERE

Another example of the Rev.’s style can be found in his speech to the NAACP HERE

6: Barack Obama isn’t even a real American citizen, and his birth certificate was faked.

FALSE!

This one was nothing more than a straight-up last-ditch effort smear campaign. There have been attempts made to make Obama appear to be “hiding something” in his past, or that his birth certificate “doesn’t seem right”, mixed with paranoiac appeals to general suspicion. At one point, the Governor of Hawaii was supposed to have “Sealed Obama’s records so no one could ever find out”.

The difference in this one is that there is no proof, not one modicum of evidence, that Obama did indeed fake his own birth certificate. And the rumor mongers can supply none. It’s a sleight of hand trick, something to raise the suspicion level against Barack Obama for those who are still on the fence about their vote. Obama has made his birth certificate publicly available, and it was immediately decried as a fake by the original smear members, although, again, no evidence of such has been proven.

Obama was born in Oahu, Hawaii, and the GOVERNOR OF HAWAII CONFIRMS THIS. Furthermore, if his birth certificate was faked, he would have to have fooled the entire US Government in the age of Homeland Security, not to mention

You can learn about it HERE.

7: But I heard a famous lawyer actually proved it in court?

FALSE!

In August 2008, Philadelphia attorney Philip Berg included claims of a forged certificate (among other rumors) as the basis for a suit in U.S. District Court challenging Barack Obama's eligibility for the presidency on the grounds that Obama was actually born in Kenya (not Hawaii) and/or subsequently gave up his U.S. citizenship and thus does not qualify as a native-born citizen of the U.S. In October 2008 a federal judge dismissed the complaint:

In a 34-page memorandum and opinion, the judge said Berg's allegations of harm were "too vague and too attenuated" to confer standing on him or any other voters.

Surrick ruled that Berg's attempts to use certain laws to gain standing to pursue his claim that Obama was not a natural-born citizen were "frivolous and not worthy of discussion."

The judge also said the harm Berg alleged did "not constitute an injury in fact" and Berg's arguments to the contrary "ventured into the unreasonable."

You can read about the evidence given and the resulting investigation HERE

8: ACORN is a terrorist organization/ACORN is trying to falsify votes

FALSE ON BOTH COUNTS!

ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, is a community-based organization that advocates for low- and moderate-income families by working on neighborhood safety, voter registration, health care, affordable housing, and other social issues.

ACORN's priorities include: better housing and wages for the poor, more community development investment from banks and governments, and better public schools. ACORN pursues these goals through demonstration, negotiation, legislation, and voter participation.

Several arguments have been made against ACORN suggesting that it’s non-profit basis is really a front for a multi-million-dollar, multinational conglomerate with a hidden political agenda. In truth, ACORN is made up of several legally distinct parts INCLUDING local non-profits, a national lobbying organization and the ACORN Housing Corporation. ACORN is non-partisan.

ACORN's Home Cleanout Demonstration Program has gutted and rebuilt over 1,850 homes with the help of volunteers. The ACORN Katrina Survivors Association formed in the aftermath of the storm is the first nationwide organization for Katrina survivors and has been working for equitable treatment for victims.

ACORN has conducted large-scale voter registration drives since 2004, primarily (although not limited to) minorities and first-time voters. The Republican Party has actively fought ACORN’s involvement with voter registration due to most of the party’s voters being Caucasian, and ACORN’s message for minorities to make their voce heard is seen as a threat to Republican Party voter control.

In a suit against ACORN, state GOP officials had filed a preliminary injunction against the community group, attempting to get the state to force ACORN to turn over its list of voters it has registered and seeking to order the group to pay for public service announcements reminding first-time voters that they must bring identification to the polls. The suit was defeated in October.

Recently, ACORN wound up in the news because of some irregularities with its voter registration operation, which ACORN reported to state officials entirely of its own volition. For an explanation of these – and why they aren’t examples of “voting fraud” – you can read this piece in the Politico HERE

Where ACORN has discovered that its workers submitted potentially false voter registration forms, it has followed legal requirements to submit the forms to voter registrars, flagged as requiring additional attention. San Diego County, California officials stated that ACORN-submitted registrations had a rejection rate of 17 percent for all errors in 2008, whether innocent or intentional, compared to less than five percent for voter drives by other organizations.

ACORN's registration efforts have been investigated in various cities and states, in some cases as a result of the ACORN-flagged registration forms in a case in Washington state, ACORN agreed to pay King County $25,000 for its investigative costs and acknowledged that the national organization could be subject to criminal prosecution if fraud occurs again. According to the prosecutor, the misconduct was done "as an easy way to get paid [by ACORN], not as an attempt to influence the outcome of elections." In October 2008, the FBI investigated ACORN to determine whether the group coordinated any registration form falsification.

ACORN has publicly supported and cooperated in the investigations of employees submitting fraudulent voter registration forms, fired them when it found that evidence supported any charges, and has stated its concern with false information on registration forms. These fake registrations

A) were caught by the states immediately,

B) would not affect the election, and

C) were not motivated by ACORN but by people that they contract with looking to get a few extra bucks from ACORN by padding their signature list. A few conmen thought they could con a few bucks from ACORN by turning in extra registration names that would get thrown out anyways. There's no evidence that it would have any effect on the election outcome.

9: Barack Obama is using ACORN to steal this election.

FALSE!

--> Barack Obama has extremely little connection with ACORN. In the mid-1990s, he talked to members of ACORN about community organizing for all of two hours, for which he was not paid.

-->In 1992, he helped a coalition of groups called Project Vote to register voters in Chicago, and ACORN was one group among many involved in the initiative (ACORN took a bigger role in Project Vote years later, long after Obama had moved on).

-->Finally, the law firm to which Obama belonged represented many groups in a voting rights lawsuit, which included ACORN and several other such sketchy groups as the U.S. Department of Justice and the League of Women Voters. You can learn about ACORN HERE

1970’s Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers is a close friend of Barack Obama

FALSE!

Obama first moved to Chicago in 1985, when he worked as a community organizer. But his career got on its current course when he returned to Hyde Park in 1991 to practice law and teach constitutional law at the University of Chicago. In 1995, State Senator Alice Palmer introduced her chosen successor, Barack Obama, to a few of the district’s influential liberals at the home of two well known figures on the local left: William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn. They spoke over this lunchtime meeting about school reform. They’re not drinking buddies, they don’t go to ball games, and they sure as hell don’t get together in basements to hold secret meetings about the Muslim takeover of America. There’s no evidence their relationship is more than the casual friendship of two men who occupy overlapping Chicago political circles and who served together on the board of a Chicago foundation.

Both Obama and Ayers were members of the board of an anti-poverty group, the Woods Fund of Chicago, between 1999 and 2002. In addition, Ayers contributed $200 to Obama's re-election fund to the Illinois State Senate in April 2001. They lived within a few blocks of each other in the trendy Hyde Park section of Chicago, and moved in the same liberal-progressive circles.

Although involved with radical protests that led to acts labeling him a terrorist, leading Chicagoans, including Mayor Daley, now commend Ayers for his service to the city. "I don't condone what he did 40 years ago, but I remember that period well," Daley said last April. "It was a difficult time, but those days are long over. I believe we have too many challenges in Chicago and our country to keep refighting 40-year-old battles."

You can read about the Wood's Fund HERE

I hope this has been helpful to you. To see where Barack Obama stands on various political issues, go to his website HERE. The election is only a few days away...We can't afford to drop the ball on this one.

I would like to take the last few lines to point out to the “Gonzo Journalism” crowd so virulent in the media today: This is what responsible journalism, coupled with research, fact-verification and critical thinking, looks like.

Take a picture.