RKMBs Forums .::Important::. Politics and Current Events Barack Hussein Obama in '08?

The Politico's Mike Allen argues that Barack Hussein Obama has a penchant to stretch the truth. He offers some examples that are reminiscent of Al "I Invented the Internet" Gore's 2000 exaggerations:

• Speaking early this month at a church in Selma, Ala., Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) said: "I'm in Washington. I see what's going on. I see those powers and principalities have snuck back in there, that they're writing the energy bills and the drug laws." . . .
  
  But not only did Obama vote for the Senate's big energy bill in 2005, he also put out a press release bragging about its provisions, and his Senate Web site carries a news article about the vote headlined, "Senate energy bill contains goodies for Illinois." . . .
  
  On Sunday, the Chicago Tribune reported that an extensive search found no basis for an episode Obama recounts [in his 1995 book, "Dreams From My Father"] about a picture he ran across in Life magazine of a "black man who had tried to peel off his skin" in a failed effort to use chemicals to lighten it. Obama writes that "seeing that article was violent for me, an ambush attack." The Tribune reported: "Yet no such Life issue exists, according to historians at the magazine. No such photos, no such article. When asked about the discrepancy, Obama said in a recent interview, 'It might have been an Ebony or it might have been . . . who knows what it was?' (At the request of the Tribune, archivists at Ebony searched their catalogue of past articles, none of which matched what Obama recalled.)" . . .
  
  As another example, consider Obama's stirring tale for the Selma audience about how he had been conceived by his parents, Barack Obama Sr. and Ann Dunham, because they had been inspired by the fervor following the "Bloody Sunday" voting rights demonstration that was commemorated March 4. "There was something stirring across the country because of what happened in Selma, Ala.," he said, "because some folks are willing to march across a bridge. So they got together and Barack Obama Jr. was born. So don't tell me I don't have a claim on Selma, Ala. Don't tell me I'm not coming home to Selma, Ala."
  
  Obama was born in 1961, and the Selma march occurred four years later, in 1965. The New York Times reported that when the senator was asked about the discrepancy later that day, he clarified: "I meant the whole civil rights movement."

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Obviously, all politicians display a tendency to stretch the truth at times. This in itself is unlikely to derail any Barack Hussein Obama electoral jihad.

However, at this point, a fair amount of the support for Senator Obama seems to come from the perception that he's more honest than the average politician. If that remains his sole, or primary, claim on the nomination stories like this could erode his support perhaps more quickly than with another candidate.

Some reports indicate that Obama was a Muslim up until 1992 and that he only changed his religion only so that he could marry:

• The evidence seems to show that both Ann Dunham (Obama's mother) and her husband Lolo Soetoro Mangunharjo (his stepfather) were in fact devout Muslims themselves and they raised their son as such.
  
  To further support this, two of Obama's classmates in Indonesia at the time one who is now the CEO of Indonesia's national airline and the other a bank manager in Jakarta remember a very different Obama, a very religious one that was well versed in Islam and liked to recite his prayers.
  
  "[Obama] was previously quite religious in Islam. His birth father, Barack Hussein Obama was a Muslim economist from Kenya.'
  
  "All the relatives ... were very devout Muslims"
  
  "He was often in the prayer room wearing a 'sarong', at that time, he was quite religious in Islam but only after marrying Michelle, he changed his religion."