Welcome to Texans for Obama

What a bogus report on Barack Obama reveals about the media food chain.

The right-wing smear machine apparently has nothing on Sen. Barack Obama.  They just swung and missed big time on this one.  This madrassah incident reminds me of what Karl Rove did to John McCain in the 2000 South Carolina Primary.  These dirty tricks will backfire because voters want to be inspired.  They want to believe in someone like Obama.

This story from Jonathon Alter examines how the right wing smear machine circulates its dirty tricks.  If can maintain a collective rapid repsonse team through online activism, then hopefully the Mainstream Media will stop falling for every lie coming out of Faux News.

From Newsweek:

What will the first full week of Campaign '08 be remembered for? That Barack Obama was under attack for his behavior as a six-year-old. It’s worth revisiting the Madrassa Hoax story for what it tells us about our warp-speed politics.

The subtext of the story was that Obama was some kind of Muslim Manchurian Candidate (or the Russian spy played by Kevin Costner in “No Way Out”)—trained in an Indonesian religious school to be a jihadist who would do Al Qaeda’s work from within. Under the old media order, the whole thing would have made for a nice joke amid the somber mood surrounding President Bush’s State of the Union address. But this is a different time, when every campaign lives in fear of being Swift-Boated. Even after the story was debunked, the folks at Fox News Channel wouldn’t apologize, and in one case kept pushing a line on the air  they knew was false.

The pathetic little saga begins on the Web site of Insight Magazine, a scandal sheet connected to the Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s Washington Times. On Jan. 17, Insight reported that “Hillary Rodham Clinton’s camp” had conducted a background check that found Obama attended a madrassa (religious seminary) when he moved with his mother and stepfather to Jakarta in the late 1960s. The idea, according to Insight, was to show that Obama was deceptive about his “Muslim past.” Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson says flatly: “They made it up.”

True or not, this bit of grade-school innuendo proved irresistible to Steve Doocy, know-it-all host of “Fox and Friends,” Roger Ailes’ idea for a right-wing morning chat show. Doocy garbled the story into a reference to Obama “spending the first decade of his life raised by a Muslim father.” After John Gibson of Fox repeated this yarn, which managed to slime two campaigns simultaneously, CNN dispatched a reporter to Obama’s old school in Jakarta, where he revealed it to be a normal public school with religion classes only once a week and no indication of Wahhabism, the Saudi-inspired extremist philosophy. (Indonesian schools were even more secular 40 years ago than they are today.) The whole underlying tale was untrue.

Nothing Extreme About Indonesian School Attended by Obama

It's pathetic that the only way Fox News and the right-wing smear machine can attack Sen. Obama is by making up lies.  But these dirty tricks will backfire, big time.  Swing voters don't like being misled, and they won't trust future character attacks from the right-wing smear machine.

The real question is why did it take the Mainstream Media so long to combat these lies?  Why does the Mainstream Media let Fox News dominate the news cycle?  Let's hope we see more responsible reporting in the future.

From ABC News:

An ABC News producer and crew visited the school in Jakarta, Indonesia, attended by Sen. Barack Obama in his youth and found it to be a normal government public school without even a hint of the extremist elements reported by various conservative news outlets in the last week.

"These rumors about our school being an Islamic extremist school are completely incorrect," assistant headmaster Akhmad Solihim told ABC News. "We are a regular public school."

Solihim confirmed that Obama attended the school as a child, before he transferred to a local Catholic school. The school featured both boy and girl students, basketball, and classes in many subjects. A class in Islam was matched by one in Christianity, complete with teachings from the New Testament, a sign featuring the Lord's Prayer and a painting of Jesus. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. One student had a SpongeBob SquarePants bookbag.

"Here we learn mathematics, science and social studies," one sixth grader, 11-year-old Rangga, told ABC News.

Why are Republicans so scared of Sen. Obama?

Finally, someone debunks the false rumor being spread by Fox News and the Washington Times. 

It's obvious that the right-wing attack machine recognizes that Obama is so popular and inspriring to regular middle class American voters that the right wing zealots must actually make sh*t up.  How sad.  They can't attack Obama's stand on Iraq because he was right and Bush/McCain was wrong.  So instead, they spread silly lies.

If they've already resorted to a deceitful smear campaign a full two years before Election Day 2008, then Obama must be doing something right.  Unfortunately for Republicans, Obama's friendly and unifying tone will make these negative attacks backfire. 

From CNN:

Allegations that Sen. Barack Obama was educated in a radical Muslim school known as a "madrassa" are not accurate, according to CNN reporting.

Insight Magazine, which is owned by the same company as The Washington Times, reported on its Web site last week that associates of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-New York, had unearthed information the Illinois Democrat and likely presidential candidate attended a Muslim religious school known for teaching the most fundamentalist form of Islam.

Obama lived in Indonesia as a child, from 1967 to 1971, with his mother and step-father and has acknowledged attending a Muslim school, but an aide said it was not a madrassa.

Insight attributed the information in its article to an unnamed source, who said it was discovered by "researchers connected to Senator Clinton." A spokesman for Clinton, who is also weighing a White House bid, denied that the campaign was the source of the Obama claim.

He called the story "an obvious right-wing hit job."

Insight stood by its story in a response posted on its Web site Monday afternoon.

The Insight article was cited several times Friday on Fox News and was also referenced by the New York Post, The Glenn Beck program on CNN Headline News and a number of political blogs.

Right wing bloggers think Obama is the "AntiChrist"

These right wing comments are truly crazy.  This just goes to show how the Republican Party has been taken over by extremists.

• Hey, I have given prophesy before and I truly beleive that Obama will be the Beast who makes everyone else worship that other funky creature. Obama will be the bridge between the average Jo Schmo who just wants the world a better place to the Anti-Christ who will take these souls away.  Also because BArack comes from such a multi-cultural liberal background he may turn into a Muslim or something...and we will die by the sword as SCripture mandates,
• I feel in my soul that he is the AntiChrist. He's too good to believe. Where did he come from? Where did his name come from? What evil forces are behind him?
• If Barack Obama runs and wins in 08' It will truely spell the doom for America as we know it. He truely is evil. We all know this and can feel it in our bones. Shame on Time Magazine and shame on Illinois.
• i wouldnt be suprised if he wins in 2008 and i wouldnt be suprised if he gets killed and comes back to life

CNN apologizes to Obama for name slip

This certainly won't be the last time that media outlets and right-wing bloggers intentionally or mistakenly make this mistake.  Luckily, Sen. Obama has embraced his unique name and actually won praise for his slogan, "skinny guy with a funny name."

US broadcaster CNN has apologised after mistakenly putting the name of US Senator Barack Obama as a caption on a story about Osama Bin Laden. 

An advertisement for a feature about the whereabouts of the al-Qaeda leader carried the caption "Where's Obama?" over images of Bin Laden.

CNN has apologised for "a very bad typographical error".

A spokesman for Mr Obama, a potential presidential hopeful, said he accepted that it was an innocent error.

"Though I'd note that the 's' and 'b' keys aren't all that close to each other, I assume it was just an unfortunate mistake," his spokesman Tommy Vietor said.

The error happened on Monday night during presenter Wolf Blitzer's news programme The Situation Room.

Mr Blitzer apologised on air for the slip. "I'm going to be making a call to him later this morning to offer my personal apology," he said.

So what?

The Chicago Sun Times reports that Mayor Daley "could care less" about Sen. Obama's openly admitted past drug use.  Indeed, Obama's refreshing candor continues to prove that he's a real human being who's made mistakes, just like everybody else.  It'd be nice if more politicians were as genuine as Obama.

Mayor Daley said Thursday he couldn't care less that Barack Obama has openly admitted that he smoked marijuana and dabbled in cocaine while in high school.

Daley said past drug use should not be an issue in Obama's campaign for president in 2008. That's even though the freshman senator with the rock star image is poised to become the first presidential candidate to openly admit past cocaine use.

"Everybody should ask their sons and daughters that question. Unfortunately, drugs and alcohol [are] very prevalent in society -- every day. You can go out to the wealthiest community. You can go to the middle-class or poor community. Drugs, unfortunately, could be in everybody's home. Alcohol and drugs is a combination. It's been a problem for many, many years in this country," the mayor said.

"People realize that. They admit their mistakes. I've seen people who are recovered alcoholics, recovered drug addicts or a combination. You see people every day who have rebuilt their lives. That, unfortunately, is a temptation you see continually -- even today. ... It should not be an issue at all, whatsoever."

The Chicago Sun-Times reported last month that Daley has decided to abandon his long-standing tradition of remaining neutral in Democratic primaries to endorse Obama over Hillary Clinton in the 2008 presidential race.

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Clarence Page successfully rebukes Bill O'Reilly attempts to swiftboat Obama.

Page said it was a non issue since Obama was a kid. Then he got away with the unthinkable claiming that Bush had refused to talk about cocaine use in his youth and it didn't hurt him.

O'Reilly commented it just may be an issue in other places like Mississippi. Page's response was perfect claiming that Obama wasn't going to carry Mississippi anyway, he's been candid, and Americans love stories of redemption.

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Michael Medved writes that Obama's cocaine confessional won't blow his chances

Much to the disappointment of Obama's rivals in both parties, these disclosures stand no chance of derailing his potential campaign and may end up adding to Obama's unconventional appeal.

First of all, Obama is hardly the first prominent politician to acknowledge youthful indiscretions involving illegal drugs. Fourteen years ago, Bill Clinton easily survived his discussions of smoking marijuana, and drew far more criticism for his dodgy, weasel-words regarding his experience ("I smoked, but I didn't inhale") than for his one-time exposure to the demon weed.

If the American people managed to elect (twice) a stonewalling, wealthy frat boy from a spectacularly privileged family despite his reported involvement with illegal substances, they will readily forgive (and even embrace) a mixed-race kid from a troubled background whose father abandoned him in his infancy and who wrote candidly, long before his presidential campaign, of his regrettable participation in the drug culture.

Obama suggests in his books that he used marijuana and "blow" to ease the pain of his ongoing struggle to define his racial identity, and that association makes it all but unthinkable that even the most ruthless political operative would attempt to make an issue of long-ago substance abuse.