OBAMASIAH: THE GAFFE MASTER

The Antique Media (“AM”) has been going after John McCain lately for his verbal mistakes, commonly referred to as “gaffes.” Gaffes are often blown up or downplayed based on whether or not they further a story line the media has attached to a politician. Lately, the AM has been trying to cover for the Obamasiah by playing up McCain’s gaffes and completely not mentioning Obamasiah’s gaffes, or at least minimizing them. Remember that this AM donates $$ to Obamasiah 100 to 1 as compared to McCain. Now, don’t confuse gaffes with flip-flops. Flip-flops are a whole different animal than gaffes, although a couple of gaffe’s I’ve listed are also flip-flops. I understand that Patterico is compiling a list of the Obamasiah’s flip-flops – I can’t wait for that to come out!

There are three main kinds of gaffes. The first kind of gaffe is when someone mis-speaks and utters a word that they clearly did not intend to utter when taken in context. An example of this was when the Obamasiah recently said, "Well let me be absolutely clear. Israel is a strong friend of Israel's." Clearly, he meant to say that the United States is a strong friend of Israel.

The second type of gaffe is when someone says something that is factually in error and it is an innocent mistake of fact or an exaggeration of a fact. An example of an innocent mistake of facts was when the Obamasiah stated that his “Uncle helped to liberate Auschwitz.” This is clearly a false statement because anyone who knows anything about the History of WWII knows that Auschwitz was in Poland, on the Red Army side of the War and that it was the Russians who liberated Auschwitz, not the Americans. The statement is also factually false because Obama’s mother was an only child. What he meant to say was that his “great uncle” was a member of the 89th Infantry Division that liberated the Ohrduf camp, part of Buchenwald and, according to the Holocaust Museum, the first concentration camp liberated by U.S. troops. (What’s funny about this one is it wasn’t an off-the-cuff remark, but rather was actually written into a speech he gave on Memorial Day.)

The third type of gaffe is when someone says something that is factually in error and it was not an innocent mistake of fact, but rather an intentional distortion or falsehood. An example of this type of gaffe was when the Obamasiah recently said: “Now, in terms of knowing my commitments, you don’t have to just look at my words, you can look at my deeds. Just this past week, we passed out of the U.S. Senate Banking Committee, which is my committee, a bill to call for divestment from Iran, as a way of ratcheting up the pressure to ensure that they don’t obtain a nuclear weapon.” The problem is, Obamasiah is not on that committee. The Democrat members of Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee are: Dodd (Ch), Johnson, Reed Schumer, Bayh, Carper, Menendez, Akaka, Brown, Casey, and Tester. So here we have a knowing falsehood as surely Obamasiah knows what Committees he is on, right? To be fair, he was one of the co-authors of the bill in question, along with 34 other co-authors.

Anyhow, like I said, the AM has been coming down rather hard on John McCain for his alleged gaffes. So I thought I would try to catalogue some of the Obamasiah’s gaffes and place them into one of the three categories of gaffes: 1) Word or words mis-spoken; 2) Innocent factual errors and exaggerations; and, 3) Intentional factual errors.

Type One Obamasiah mis-spoken errors:

- claiming to be in Sioux City instead of Sioux Falls, an easy mistake.

- claiming to be in Sunshine FL instead of Sunrise FL, an easy mistake.

- stating that he had “already visited 57 states and had one more to go” (making the U.S. a country of 58 total states) Clearly, he meant to say 47 states with one more to go which would have been the 48 mainland States.)

- stating that Israel is a strong friend of Israel’s

- stating “I think that DOMA, the Defense Against Marriage Act, was, was a (sic) unnecessary imposition on what had been the traditional rules governing marriage and how states interact on the issues of marriage.” – Barack Obama, referring to the Defense Of Marriage Act (DOMA), 7/1/08

- stating “So if you’ve got a wall that’s cutting the campus of the University of Texas in Brownville in half…” – Barack Obama, discussing the University of Texas in Brownsville.

- Stating “My father served in World War II, and when he came home, he got the services that he needed.” – Barack Obama, on how his grandfather served in WWII.


Type Two Obamasiah innocent factual errors or exaggerations:

- claiming that his “uncle” helped liberate “Auschwitz.” This was wrong on two counts, first it was his “great uncle,” not his “uncle” and second it was “Ohrduf” camp, part of Buchenwald, not “Auschwitz.”

- in another, earlier gaffe back in 2002, Mr. Obama claimed his grandfather knew U.S. troops who liberated Auschwitz and Treblinka – even though only Russian troops entered those concentration camps.

- JFK helping to bring his father to the US. Clearly an exaggeration.

- Claiming that Arkansas was a "nearby" state to Kentucky. (When his own state, Illinois actually shares a border with Kentucky and Arkansas is three states away from Kentucky.

- BARACK OBAMA: The objective of this trip was to have substantive discussions with people like President Karzai or Prime Minister Maliki or President Sarkozy or others who I expect to be dealing with over the next eight to ten years. …
LARA LOGAN: Do you have any doubts?
OBAMA: Never.

- Memorial Day speech in New Mexico where he said that America's "fallen heroes" were present and listening to him in the audience.

- At The Obamasiah’s Berlin speech he said: “Not only have walls come down in Berlin, but they have come down in Belfast, where Protestant and Catholic found a way to live together;” Wrong! In fact, more walls are going up in Belfast. http://www.usatoday.com/news/topstories/2008-05-03-1826820552_x.htm

Type Three Obamasiah intentional factual errors:

- Obama's claim that the 1965 Selma march brought his parents together when Obama had been born four years before the march! This one is hysterical. He was born in 1961, Selma was in 1965. This was either intentionally wrong or he is the stupidest candidate ever.

- His boast that he helped pass legislation regulating the nuclear industry when that legislation didn't pass the full Senate.

- Obamasiah’s claim that "10,000 people died" in the Kansas tornadoes when the death toll was really only 12. Had he said 10 people, or even 1200 people, we could maybe put this in category two above, but come on, 10,000! He was clearly trying to make the disaster appear much worse than it really was in order to score points.

- his denial last April that it was his handwriting on a questionnaire in which, as a state senate candidate, he favored a ban on handguns. (His campaign later admitted that it was his handwriting, but that that did not mean he had read the whole thing.)

- told a Portland, Ore., crowd that Iran doesn't "pose a serious threat to us," saying that "tiny countries" with small defense budgets aren't much to worry about.” But Iran has almost one-fourth the population of the U.S. and is well on its way to developing nuclear weapons. The next day Mr. Obama had to reverse himself and declare he had "made it clear for years that the threat from Iran is grave." This gaffe is also a complete flip-flop.

- he said he would meet with Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez to discuss, among other issues, Chavez's support of the Marxist FARC guerrillas in Colombia. The next day, in Miami, he insisted any country supporting the FARC should suffer "regional isolation." This is another flip-flop too.

- But At A July 2007 Debate, Obama Announced He Would Personally Meet With Leaders Of Iran, North Korea, Syria And Other Hostile Nations "Without Precondition." Question: "[W]ould you be willing to meet separately, without precondition, during the first year of your administration, in Washington or anywhere else, with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea, in order to bridge the gap that divides our countries?" ... Obama: "I would. And the reason is this, that the notion that somehow not talking to countries is punishment to them -- which has been the guiding diplomatic principle of this administration - is ridiculous." (CNN/YouTube Democrat Presidential Candidate Debate, Charleston, SC, 7/23/07)

However, he later said "I Didn't Say That I Would Meet Unconditionally With Hostile Leaders.” Obama: "I didn't say that I would meet unconditionally as John McCain maintained, because that would suggest whether it was useful or not, whether it was advancing our interests or not, I would just do it for the sake of doing it ... That's not a change in position, that's simply responding to distortions of my position." (Jim Rutenberg and Jeff Zeleny, "Obama Seeks To Clarify His Disputed Comments On Diplomacy," The New York Times, 5/29/08)

- He's claimed, in defense of his “without preconditions” position, that John F. Kennedy's 1961 summit with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev in Vienna was a crucial meeting that led to the end of the Cold War. Hah! Not quite. Kennedy himself admitted he was unprepared for Khrushchev's bullying. "He beat the hell out of me," Kennedy confided to advisers. The Soviet leader reported to his Politburo that the American president was weak. Two months later, the Berlin Wall was erected and stood for 28 years. Yet Obamasiah calls this a crucial meeting that led to the end of the cold war. Lie.

- An Obama ad team will be on hand for the Berlin rally, which figures to become part of the campaign… as a TV commercial. Evidently the campaign thinks the giving of an overseas speech by a US senator with three years experience and no major legislative accomplishments under his belt constitutes campaign ad magic. Fair enough. It’s just that today’s report undercuts somewhat Obama campaign senior advisor Robert Gibbs’ claim this “is not a campaign trip.” Now, while this lie falls at the hands of his campaign staff, it is whopper and deserves mentioning.

- The presumed Democratic nominee replaced his Iraq issue Web page, which had described the surge as a "problem" that had barely reduced violence. "The surge is not working," Obama's old plan stated, citing a lack of Iraqi political cooperation but crediting Sunni sheiks - not U.S. military muscle - for quelling violence in Anbar Province. Obama's campaign posted a new Iraq plan Sunday night, which cites an "improved security situation" paid for with the blood of U.S. troops since the surge began in February 2007. It praises G.I.s' "hard work, improved counterinsurgency tactics and enormous sacrifice." So was he lying then, or is he lying now?

- Obama was embarrassed after an aide told the Canadian government that Obama wasn't really serious about renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement. When his campaigning at that time was calling for a renegotiation of NAFTA! Outright lies.

- Another great gaffe by one of his major advisors was when Obama advisor Richard Danzig claimed that Winnie the Pooh would be a good model for U.S. Foreign Policy and national Security. “Richard Danzig, who served as Navy Secretary under President Clinton and is tipped to become National Security Adviser in an Obama White House, told a major foreign policy conference in Washington that the future of US strategy in the war on terrorism should follow a lesson from the pages of Winnie the Pooh, which can be shortened to: if it is causing you too much pain, try something else. Mr Danzig told the Centre for New American Security: “Winnie the Pooh seems to me to be a fundamental text on national security.”

It was covered in the U.K Press, but nowhere to be seen in the AM. I wonder why? Could it be that it is so ridiculous that it would make the Obamasiah’s Foreign Policy look like a complete and utter joke? Check out the article and decide for yourself if you think having Winnie the Pooh foreign policy is, or isn’t a monumental gaffe. Check this out: “Winnie the Pooh, Luke Skywalker and British football hooligans could shape the foreign policy of Barack Obama if he becomes US President, according to a key adviser.” http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/uselection2008/barackobama/2139573/Barack-Obama-aide-Why-Winnie-the-Pooh-should-shape-US-foreign-policy.html. Or, just Google “winnie the pooh foreign policy obama. ROTFLMAO

While this list is as thorough as I can make in the hour or so spent researching it, I do not believe that it is exhaustive and I’m sure that there are even more Obamasiah gaffes out there. I simply wanted to come up with a representative showing of some of the GaffeMaster’s errors and outright lies. Don't hold your breath waiting for the AM to get these out though, they don't fit with their game plan to get the Obamasiah elected. Rather, you'll probably continue to see the AM harp on any little mistake McCain happens to make and then question his age.

I can’t wait to see Patterico’s list of flip-flops when that comes out.

In the end, what does all this show? I think it clearly and convincingly demonstrates, using his own words, that the Obamasiah is simply not experienced enough to be the President of the United States. It also shows, beyond a doubt, that far from being a “new breed” of politician, he’s just the same old same old tired liberal politico hack who will say anything to get elected.