If you have not already read it, please see Part ONE for statements 1-16. If you have, feel free to bypass my usual disclaimers and skip below the fold for statements 17-38.
My boss' brother-in-law is one of those wacky "Obama will give our country to Al Kay-Duh, and hey, have you seen that great New Yorker cover yet?" types, and he occasionally sends him those poorly written bastions of right wing talking points, the anti-Obama e-mails that make us all wonder who in the world would be foolish enough to believe them. And, as any good employee would (any good employee with as little life as I have), I've taken it upon myself to denounce the lies and expose the truth. Huzzah!
This diary is the second in an irregular series of diaries I will publish as my boss sends me stuff to debunk. This one was REALLY long, and while I compiled the debunkment pretty quickly, I didn't think to record the websites I used as references. Since I've finally finished re-researching, here is the remaining half of the completely refuted e-mail. Everybody ready? Okiedokie. Here we go...
17.) Oops, I Misvoted - NOT EXACTLY, only when caught by church groups and Democrats, did you beg to change your misvote.
Okay, I need some help on this one. I have no idea what Branham is even referring to with this. I googled "Obama change misvote", and the first five pages of returned sites were all copies of Branham's list of 38 statements. NONE of them have anything to back up this statement. Check out Obama’s voting record yourself, and if you can figure it out, please let me know.
18.) I Was A Professor Of Law - NOT EXACTLY, you were a senior lecturer ON LEAVE.
Um, YES EXACTLY. Word for word, here’s the statement made by the University of Chicago: "From 1992 until his election to the U.S. Senate in 2004, Barack Obama served as a professor in the Law School. He was a Lecturer from 1992 to 1996. He was a Senior Lecturer from 1996 to 2004, during which time he taught three courses per year. Senior Lecturers are considered to be members of the Law School faculty and are regarded as professors, although not full-time or tenure-track. The title of Senior Lecturer is distinct from the title of Lecturer, which signifies adjunct status. Like Obama, each of the Law School's Senior Lecturers has high-demand careers in politics or public service, which prevent full-time teaching. Several times during his 12 years as a professor in the Law School, Obama was invited to join the faculty in a full-time tenure-track position, but he declined."
19.) I Was A Constitutional Lawyer - NOT EXACTLY, you were a senior lecturer ON LEAVE.
Wow, déjà vu... Um, YES EXACTLY, once again. Between 1993 and 2002, Barack Obama worked as a civil rights lawyer with the Chicago law firm of Miner, Barnhill, & Galland.
20.) Without Me, There Would Be No Ethics Bill - NOT EXACTLY, you didn't write it, introduce it, change it, or create it.
My grandmother didn’t give birth to me, nurse me, name me, nor did I gestate inside her womb... but only an idiot would say that I would be lying to claim that without her, I wouldn’t exist. The Legislative Transparency and Accountability act drew heavily from a bill that Senators Obama and Feingold had originally introduced, and contained a provision to require the disclosure of lobbyist's "bundled" contributions that was pushed for by Barack Obama. The Washington Post said: "No single change would add more to public understanding of how money really operates in Washington."
21.) The Ethics Bill Was Hard To Pass - NOT EXACTLY, it took just 14 days from start to finish.
Though it did only take 14 days from when the final version of the bill first hit the floor to pass into law, that’s not an indication of how difficult it was to get it to that point. The full process took much more than two weeks- the Senate began work on it in January of 2007, and Obama continued to fight for ethics reform until the bill was finally passed in September of 2007. And at this point, if you’re arguing that Barack Obama’s ability to quickly pass a piece of difficult legislation is a BAD thing, then you’re really scraping the bottom of the barrel for things to complain about.
22.) I Wrote A Tough Nuclear Bill - NOT EXACTLY, your bill was rejected by your own party for its pandering and lack of all regulation - mainly because of your Nuclear donor, Exelon, from which David Axelrod came.
Barack Obama’s original bill, the Nuclear Release Notice Act of 2006, would have required that nuclear plants immediately notify federal, state and local officials of any accidental release of radioactive material that exceeded allowable limits for normal operation. It also required reporting of repeated accidental leaks that fell below those limits. All subsequent revisions to the bill that weakened it resulted not from any influence by Exelon, but as a necessary response to a legislative roadblock put up by Republicans, who controlled the Senate at the time. If Senator Obama had been listening to industry demands, he wouldn’t have repeatedly criticized Exelon in the press, introduced the bill against their interests and then fought for months to get action on it.
23.) I Have Released My State Records - NOT EXACTLY, as of March, 2008, state bills you sponsored or voted for have yet to be released, exposing all the special interests pork hidden within.
ALL Illinois Senate records are available directly from the state, the Illinois State Records Act. This lie comes from an AP article that claimed Barack Obama could not produce his own records from his days in the Illinois Senate. The actual quote from Obama was "I don't have -- I don't maintain -- a file of eight years of work in the state Senate because I didn't have the resources available to maintain those kinds of records." Just because he doesn’t maintain the records himself doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
24.) I Took On The Asbestos Altgeld Gardens Mess - NOT EXACTLY, you were part of a large group of people who remedied Altgeld Gardens. You failed to mention anyone else but yourself, in your books.
Many of the key players who worked with Obama at Altgeld Gardens said he deserves full credit for helping secure grants for a jobs program and for pulling together the team of hundreds of residents who rallied for improvements. Even so, in his book, Barack Obama mentioned staying in the background of the asbestos fight, giving the parents all the credit for convincing the city to perform asbestos testing.
25.) My Economics Bill Will Help America - NOT EXACTLY, your 111 economic policies were just combined into a proposal which lost 99-0, and even YOU voted against your own bill.
What bill? I need some more help from you guys. I have no idea what Branham is referring to here, and could not find any reference to it anywhere outside this list. Once again, here's Obama’s voting record for reference.
26.) I Have Been A Bold Leader In Illinois - NOT EXACTLY, even your own supporters claim to have not seen BOLD action on your part.
Barack Obama NEVER claimed to be a "Bold Leader". The "supporter" who said Obama was not bold was actually Illinois Republican state Sen. Dan Cronin. Whether his actions in the Illinois Senate were bold or not is clearly a matter of opinion. However, he does have a notable history of bipartisanship and an extraordinary record of sponsored bills to his name. Here is a diagram of the impressive 823 bills he sponsored while in the Illinois Legislature.
27.) I Passed 26 Of My Own Bills In One Year - NOT EXACTLY, they were not YOUR bills, but rather handed to you, after their creation by a fellow Senator, to assist you in a future bid for higher office.
Barack Obama NEVER claimed to pass 26 of "his own" bills. It is true however that Illinois' State Senate President Emil Jones appointed Obama to be the sponsor of many of the 26 bills that were passed in his last year in the Illinois Senate.
28.) No One on my campaign contacted Canada about NAFTA - NOT EXACTLY, the Canadian Government issued the names and a memo of the conversation your campaign had with them.
This accusation seems rather pointless- since the fate of NAFTA was a large concern for Canada, ALL Presidential candidates were speaking to the Canadian Government regarding their plans for it. But let’s assume the writer is accusing Barack Obama’s campaign of reassuring the Canadian Government that his political speeches on NAFTA were all just campaign rhetoric; let’s assume he’s referring to what has become known as "NAFTA-Gate".
To make a long story short, here’s what happened. In a February 2008 debate, Obama said that he would renegotiate the NAFTA treaty with Canada and Mexico or else opt out of it. The next day after the debate, the Canadian Television Network (CTV) ran a story that said that an Obama staff member called Canada's ambassador to the U.S. to alert him about what Obama was going to say and to not take it seriously. The Obama campaign and the Canadian embassy both issued statements denying that any such phone call had taken place. Then CTV changed their tune and reported that the conversation about NAFTA may have taken place in meeting that included Austan Goolsbee, the senior economic adviser to the Obama campaign, and produced a memo to that effect. Goolsbee said the memo "misquoted" him, and that "In no possible way was I inferring that he [Obama] was going to introduce any policies that you should ignore and he had no intention of enacting." Canadian embassy in Washington now says that it "deeply regrets" the affair, and that "there was no intention to convey, in any way" that Obama was being inconsistent about NAFTA.
To make a short story long, read all the details in TocqueDeville's excellent diary on the subject.
29.) I Am Tough On Terrorism - NOT EXACTLY, you missed the Iran Resolution vote on terrorism and your good friend Ali Abunimah supports the destruction of Israel.
Obama’s problem with the Kyl-Lieberman resolution was not the designation of the Iranian guard as a terrorist group, but the idea that it committed American troops in Iraq to countering Iranian influence. Instead, Obama has sponsored a more far-reaching piece of legislation; the Iran Counter-Proliferation Act, which would designate the Iranian Revolutionary Guards a terrorist organ, as well as prohibit trade with Iran, freeze Iranian officials' assets and help combat terrorist financing.
Barack Obama has made public his comprehensive strategy to fight global terrorism, and it has met with the approval of terrorism experts, including (but not limited to) Richard A. Clarke, former White House counterterrorism official, Teresita C. Schaffer, Director of the Center for Strategic and International Studies' South Asia program, Lisa Curtis, senior South Asia research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, and Daniel Markey, former State Department official, current senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
The writer calling Ali Abunimah a "good friend" of Barack Obama is a stretch and a half. Obama was Abunimah’s state senator for many years, and Abunimah once introduced him on stage in a West Bank community fundraiser, but apart from that they have no other personal relationship. In fact, as recently as January 2008, Ali Abunimah has criticized Barack Obama’s position on the Israel-Palestine conflict as being pro-Israel.
30.) I Want All Votes To Count - NOT EXACTLY, you said let the delegates decide.
Barack Obama pledged to abide by the rules of the Democratic National Committee, and has never waivered from his pledge, insisting that all votes cast in accordance with the rules be counted, and all delegates be assigned fairly according to the official regulations of the DNC. To claim that his statement that the delegates decide the nominee is somehow in opposition to fairly counting the votes is disingenuous, and suggests a lack of understanding as to how the Democratic Presidential nomination process works.
31.) I Want Americans To Decide - NOT EXACTLY, you prefer caucuses that limit the vote, confuse the voters, force a public vote, and only operate during small windows of time.
Barack Obama has NEVER voiced a preference for caucuses. Branham appears to have made an assumption based on Obama's superior performance in the primary caucus states. In addition, caucuses do not limit the vote, and they usually do not have time limits (however there is no national standard for caucuses, so it varies by state). I’m not sure what the writer means by caucuses "forcing" a public vote, but I’m pretty sure they only confuse voters who aren’t paying much attention to the process. Click here for a simple analysis of the primary vs. caucus system.
32.) I passed 900 Bills in the State Senate - NOT EXACTLY, you passed 26, most of which you didn't write yourself.
Barack Obama NEVER claimed to pass 900 bills in the Illinois Senate... but the number’s not far off. He actually passed 823 bills, of which 26 were passed in his last year.
33.) I Believe In Fairness, Not Tactics - NOT EXACTLY, you used tactics to eliminate Alice Palmer from running against you.
Alice Palmer ran for US Congress, and declared Obama to be a suitable successor for her Illinois Senate seat. When Palmer failed to win her bid for the congressional race, she attempted to run a nomination petition to retain her seat; however there were numerous obvious flaws in her signature sheets, including enough fake signatures to disqualify her petition. It was because Alice Palmer couldn't run a successful petition drive that she was unable to run against Obama.
34.) I Don't Take PAC Money - NOT EXACTLY, you take loads of it.
Barack Obama has NEVER said that he does not take money from political action committees. However, he did make a pledge early in his presidential campaign not to accept money from lobbyists or PACs and he has held to that pledge with consistency. Obama has not taken a single penny from PACs during his run for the Presidency. He did raise $1.2 million from PACs for his 2004 U.S. Senate race, and just under $300k from PACs for his Illinois state Senate races, but then again, Obama did not pledge to refuse money from lobbyists or PACs during his previous campaigns.
35.) I don't Have Lobbyists - NOT EXACTLY, you have over 47 lobbyists, and counting.
Barack Obama has NEVER claimed not to "have lobbyists". He has stated that he does not employ federally registered lobbyists and that his administration will not include any. That statement is correct so far, in that he does not currently employ any federally registered lobbyists and never has in the course of his campaign for the Presidency. In addition, Barack Obama does not accept funds from currently registered federal lobbyists.
36.) My Campaign Had Nothing To Do With The 1984 Ad – NOT EXACTLY, your own campaign worker made the ad on his Apple in one afternoon.
Phillip de Vellis, the author of the 1984 ad was not a campaign worker for the Obama campaign. He was an employee of Blue State Digital, a software development and hosting website that was not engaged in any relationship with the Obama Campaign for creative or non-technical services. He created this video on his own time, without the knowledge of campaign or company, and was terminated from his employment with Blue State Digital pursuant to their company policy regarding outside political work or commentary.
37.) I Have Always Been Against Iraq - NOT EXACTLY, you weren't in office to vote against it AND you have voted to fund it every single time.
Barack Obama expressed opposition to the war in Iraq since well before he gained his Senate seat in 2004. Just because he wasn’t in office in 2002 when they held the vote that authorized military action in Iraq doesn’t mean he did not oppose the war. As a presidential candidate, he has issued proposals on how he would end the war once he gains office. Obama does not believe that funding of the troops should be cut immediately without being able to ensure a safe and orderly redeployment. As he explained: "Once the bus is in the ditch, there are only so many ways to get it out."
38.) I Have Always Supported Universal Health Care - NOT EXACTLY, your plan leaves us all to pay for the 15,000,000 who don't have to buy it
This accusation is kind of confusing. "Universal healthcare" is healthcare that is available universally... and Obama's plan is one that makes healthcare universally available. Why is Branham implying that criticism of how the plan will be paid for means that Obama was telling less than the truth about his support for Universal Health Care? Regardless, the writer is incorrect as to how the plan will be paid for. The cost of the plan ($50-$65 billion per year) would be fully covered by allowing the Bush tax cuts (for people making over $250,000 per year) expire as scheduled without being made permanent.
Branham's list of 38 statements concluded with a phrase in Latin;
"Qui non intelligit aut discat aut taceat"
Who does not understand should either learn, or be silent.
To which I can only reply;
"Condemnant quod non intellegunt"
They condemn because they do not understand.