Too Many People Taking Obama Too Seriously

If someone woke up Rip van Winkle style after a 20 year sleep and popped right into the middle of our 2008 presidential election, he'd think it was a "Saturday Night Live" installment. The Democratic Party has nominated Sen. Barack Obama, a man with a razor-thin resume, who has never accomplished anything in his life but self-aggrandizement and running for office, who is full of wacky ideas many bordering on, if not in the realm of, pure idiocy. A man who has an anti-American perspective and associates with bigots, racists and anti-Americans, and who - despite all that - is hailed as a savior by the mainstream media and has gone almost two years into a campaign, escaping tough questions and remains essentially unvetted.

We face a new and dangerous threat to our very existence from Islamofascist terrorists. We face jihadist regimes that are already or are going nuclear. We have to deal with an economy going through a major crisis and we are being challenged by new potential superpowers such as China and India and by a whole series of dangerous autocracies such as Iran, Russia, Venezuela, North Korea and Syria. At such a time are we going to elect an amateur-hour candidate who is both untested and unvetted?

We need a tested leader with unquestioned experience, character and courage but we are actually considering a political toddler who comes over as an unprincipled opportunist, who will do and say anything to get elected, who stoops to playing the race card and to stirring up racial intolerance to win an election. And yet this man, whose actions are the opposite of his rhetoric, who is a product of the most corrupt political machine in America, the Cook County Chicago gang, who has always gone along with the old boy network out of Chicago and has always refused to help in reforming that machine still has a good chance of being elected.

This can't be happening. Surely, it must be a joke. To get some measure of its comic, rather than its tragic, aspects I have to call on the great comedian Jackie Mason. Here's what Mr. Mason had to say about Sen. Obama and his pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah "God Damn America" Wright, during a radio interview program:

"First thing he says this guy is his mentor, his teacher his philosopher, I learned everything from him. Then they ask, did you ever listen to him? Never. I was in the church but I never heard him. He was talking, but I didn't know I should be listening. And besides, whatever he said he didn't say it on the days that I was there. He said it on Tuesday. I came on Thursdays. Then when he saw his polls started to go down a little he said: he was always my mentor but he wasn't a close mentor. I saw him, but not very often. I heard him, but only maybe once in a while. Then he said: I never even liked him. I never got involved with him. Then he said: whatever he said was disgusting to me and if I knew he was saying these things, I would have hated him a long time ago. And he sounded like he just found out about him 20 years later, when he wasn't in the church. He was in the church 20 years and he never heard anything. Now that he's out of the church for a year, he suddenly found out what he said in church when he wasn't actually there."

The Obama phenomenon is so bizarre that it takes a comedian to best understand and unmask him. It is too far out of our usual experience for most to comprehend this irrational and dangerous Obamania.

In the interview, Mr. Mason concludes Sen. Obama is a fraud and a world-class liar. He said Sen. Obama "is a man who's a real, devastating, fraudulent liar. He makes (Bill) Clinton look like an honest man. He's already told a hundred lies about every issue ... There's no bigger fake in the history of politics than this Barack Obama.

"He is a total fraud and a fake in every respect. He lies every single day but the press is all behind him, because the press is 90 percent Democratic. And not only are they behind him but they hate Bush ... the press of America should be on his [Obama's] payroll because they are all working for him day and night. He gets like a $100 million dollars worth of [free] advertising while (John) McCain hasn't got 10 cents of advertising from the American press."

That's about what I concluded after hearing Sen. Obama discuss his relationship to Rev. Wright, and I've studied the man from almost every angle since. Everything I know about him points in the direction of Mr. Mason's conclusion: Sen. Obama is a phony, a faker, a four-flusher and a fraud.

It is frightening to even think there's a chance this man could be elected to the most important and most powerful office in the world in times like these. Any reasonable observer would conclude if Sen. Obama is in the White House, it is the end of America as we know it. He would almost certainly wreck our health care delivery system and economy and would weaken our national defense while undermining our security so severely that we would lose the war on terror. Iran is getting ready to produce nuclear weapons and has the missiles to deliver them and Sen. Obama is ready to talk to Iran ... after Europeans have spent five years negotiating with him, while he was obviously just stalling.

John Bolton, our former ambassador to the United Nations, is right - we've seen talking gets us nowhere and now we are left with limited and unattractive options. But as bad as those options are, including military force, they get much worse if Iran finally goes nuclear. We may face war against Iran or the possibility of Iran using nuclear blackmail against Europe and the Middle East. The only arrows in Sen. Obama's quiver are pretty speeches, diplomacy and the threat of arrest and prosecution for terrorists including those that might nuke us. Sen. Obama has already adopted Mr. Clinton's law enforcement strategy on terrorism, so if a terrorist blows up Philadelphia, Sen. Obama will respond by issuing a warrant for his arrest. This is real, even though it sounds like "Saturday Night Live."

But you don't have to be a great comedian like Mr. Mason to see how ridiculous and almost comical Sen. Obama positions are. Take his position on the current financial crisis. He blames everyone except himself and the Democratic Party and the Democratic-controlled Congress.

He points the finger at Sen. John McCain and conveniently neglects the fact that Sen. McCain predicted the very problem we're now experiencing and introduced legislation to properly regulate Freddy Mac and Fannie Mae and head off its abuses, which, in turn, led to the mortgage and financial crisis we're now in.

Sen. McCain sponsored and fought for the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005, and the speech he gave in support of it merits extensive quotation here as he perfectly identified the problem before calling for remedies that would have fixed it.

"Mr. President, this week Fannie Mae's regulator reported that the company's quarterly reports of profit growth over the past few years were 'illusions deliberately and systematically created' by the company's senior management, which resulted in a $10.6 billion accounting scandal.

"The Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight's report goes on to say that Fannie Mae employees deliberately and intentionally manipulated financial reports to hit earnings targets in order to trigger bonuses for senior executives. In the case of Franklin Raines, Fannie Mae's former chief executive officer, OFHEO's report shows that over half of Mr. Raines' compensation for the six years through 2003 was directly tied to meeting earnings targets. The report of financial misconduct at Fannie Mae echoes the deeply troubling $5 billion profit restatement at Freddie Mac.

The OFHEO report also states that Fannie Mae used its political power to lobby Congress in an effort to interfere with the regulator's examination of the company's accounting problems. This report comes some weeks after Freddie Mac paid a record $3.8 million fine in a settlement with the Federal Election Commission and restated lobbying disclosure reports from 2004 to 2005. These are entities that have demonstrated over and over again that they are deeply in need of reform.

For years I have been concerned about the regulatory structure that governs Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac ... and the report this week does nothing to ease these concerns. In fact, the report does quite the contrary. OFHEO's report solidifies my view that the GSEs need to be reformed without delay.

I join as a cosponsor of the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005, S. 190, to underscore my support for quick passage of GSE regulatory reform legislation. If Congress does not act, American taxpayers will continue to be exposed to the enormous risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose to the housing market, the overall financial system, and the economy as a whole. I urge my colleagues to support swift action on this GSE reform legislation."

Sen. McCain foresaw the future and where we are now with precision accuracy. Then he proposed subjecting Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac to tough regulatory controls. The legislation spelled out tests of capital requirements and even regulated golden parachutes.

The bill never got out of committee, because the then ranking member of the Banking Committee, Chris Dodd, D-Conn., was getting heavy campaign contributions from the people named by Sen. McCain in his speech and was getting a preferred mortgage rate from the infamous Countrywide Mortgage. At the same time, guess who was the No. 3 recipient of the money was - the finger-pointing Sen. Obama. He always went along with the Democratic Party line, so he, too, can be assumed to have been opposed to Sen. McCain's reform measure and he certainly wasn't fighting for its passage. Here are the four leaders in that money according to a front-page report in Investor's Business Daily (Sept. 19, 2008). The contributions came in from 1989 to 2008:

1. Sen. Chris Dodd, $133,900. 2. Sen. John Kerry, $111,000. 3. Sen. Barack Obama, $105,849. 4. Sen. Hillary Clinton, $75,550

Sen. Obama, awash in Fannie Mae/Freddy Mac money, and his advisers has the gall to talk of "crony capitalism." You might say he has the audacity of the hopeless. He is the very symbol of cronyism and the go-along-get-along mentality he has displayed since his start with the corrupt Chicago political machine.

He wouldn't bring about real reforms even if he understood what is going on. In his statement on AIG, the American International Group, he couldn't even get the name of the company right, and referred to it as the "American Insurance Group."

The Democratic Party, President Clinton, and Sen. Obama made another important contribution to the present crisis. They were all involved in lowering mortgage standards to spread home ownership. That meant many were getting mortgages without down payments and without the financial position to pay them off. This was a major factor in the fiasco that followed.

During recent years, Freddy Mac and Fannie Mae were a virtual campaign unit for the Democratic Party. Others on the list of the 25 top recipients in Congress included House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi.

To make matters worse, who did Sen. Obama select to head the group appointed to come up with his vice-presidential nominees. None other than Jim Johnson, who was once the top executive at Fannie Mae when these problems, including billion-dollar accounting irregularities, were developing. And to make that brew even worse, Mr. Johnson was also a top executive at the recently bankrupt Lehman Brothers, one of the biggest casualties of this fiasco. Mr. Johnson was removed from the committee to help select the vice president but is still an adviser to the Obama campaign. Another Obama campaign adviser is Franklin Raines, the above-mentioned chief executive officer of Fannie Mae, who helped bring on the crisis we're now in, but who received compensation totaling about $90 million.

And how has Sen. Obama displayed his leadership during this crisis. He had no position on the bailout of AIG, the giant insurance company. I guess we can put him down as voting "present," his vote on 130 controversial measures while in the Illinois legislature. He has no proposal now to fix the present crisis, but wants to wait till things settle down. I guess we can put him down for another "present" vote on what to do, rather than yes, no, or here's my proposal. As Rudy Giuliani so perfectly put it, when you are president there is no such thing as a present vote. Sen. Obama is not a leader. He is a speech giver. And he doesn't even do that very well without the aid of a teleprompter. Who do you want in the White House during this most dangerous and unprecedented time in our history - the unvetted, untested beginner or the battle-tested, public servant who has demonstrated he can make sound decisions and who loves his country without doubts and qualifications?

We must choose between Sen. Obama who makes speeches, votes present and is a wimp. Remember he's never had the courage to stand up to his own party, to his corrupt Chicago political machine, or to even participate in town forums with Sen. McCain. For 20 years, he sat in Rev. Wright's church and didn't have the courage to object or even walk out. He needs the security of a teleprompter to face an audience. Or we can choose Sen. McCain, who has a long record not only of achievement, but also of willingness to cross party lines and confront his own party if necessary when bringing about reforms and change. He has demonstrated he has courage and loves America in every sense and in every way. He has demonstrated what he is made of by actions and sacrifice and has a long and distinguished record of service and patriotism. He has never voted present and even when you disagree with him, you know where he stands and what you can expect from him.

Herb Denenberg is a former Pennsylvania Insurance Commissioner, Pennsylvania Public Utility Commissioner, and professor at the Wharton School. He is a longtime Philadelphia journalist and consumer advocate. He is also a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of the Sciences. His column appears daily in The Bulletin. You can reach him at advocate@thebulletin.us.

Jackie Mason, like Yogi Berra, is a treasure. When I read stuff he has said, I can always hear his voice saying this stuff. What a great man.

Sen. Obama "is a man who's a real, devastating, fraudulent liar. He makes (Bill) Clinton look like an honest man. He's already told a hundred lies about every issue ... There's no bigger fake in the history of politics than this Barack Obama.

Jackie Mason is a National GD Treasure.

Once again, I tell ya - Obama is a black Jimmah Carter. An equal lack of knowlegable on domestic and world affairs and, if elected, he’ll bungle governing just as much. I think the silver lining is that he’d likewise only serve one term and, if we’re very lucky, it’d be followed by another Reagan!

Mason is a very smart and wise man.

And this isnt the first devastating column Herb Denenberg has written about Barry this campaign.

Thanks for posting it.

Along with all that, democrats don’t understand that Obama only talks about things that he is told to talk about. Others are leading Obama and if they elect him, they are electing his bosses..........not a President.

I’ve posted articles by Denenberg for a couple months now and he’s been ripping BO as has Thomes Sowell, they both have a huge amount of material to rip him on and neither are bashful.

Its actually really simple. The 60s radicals found out they couldn’t bomb their way to communism, so they infiltrated our public schools, universities and mainstream media outlets. Obama speaks to the products of their teachings. So in essence, Osama talks to the most ignorant and brainwashed in our society and the MSM lies further delude these robots.

Great article.

However, I’ve grown tired of the Obama is a hack, fare. He is obviously only the front man for the real power/money man. I wonder who that might be? there is the story...

If someone woke up Rip van Winkle style after a 20 year sleep and popped right into the middle of our 2008 presidential election, he'd think it was a "Saturday Night Live" installment.

Rip Van Winkle is wide awake and running for the Tennessee State House. He has an uphill battle, he needs to convince about 3,000 long time dems, who will not vote for Obama, to go ahead and vote for a Republican at the state level. He's out walking the district and meeting voters every day. He is a true conservative.

I think he has a real shot in this overly dem rural district. He's running against a well funded incumbent who only comes out at election time for photo ops. Here's his website: http://vanwinkle37.com

Help him out if you can. Every little bit helps.

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