Two Lies Obama Told During the Debate

[deacon blues]

From the debate transcript:

OBAMA: Bob, I think it’s going to be important to just — I’ll respond to these two particular allegations that Senator McCain has made and that have gotten a lot of attention.

In fact, Mr. Ayers has become the centerpiece of Senator McCain’s campaign over the last two or three weeks. This has been their primary focus. So let’s get the record straight. Bill Ayers is a professor of education in Chicago.

Forty years ago, when I was 8 years old, he engaged in despicable acts with a radical domestic group. I have roundly condemned those acts. Ten years ago he served and I served on a school reform board that was funded by one of Ronald Reagan’s former ambassadors and close friends, Mr. Annenberg…

Mr. Ayers is not involved in my campaign. He has never been involved in this campaign. And he will not advise me in the White House. So that’s Mr. Ayers…

Mr. Ayers and Mr. Obama have severed on other panels besides the Annenberg one. (Such as the Woods Fund.)

And, of course, Mr. Obama had his political career kicked off by the then out-going State Senator Ms. Alice Palmer in Mr. Ayers’ living room.

(Later, when Ms. Palmer decided she wanted to hold on to her Senate seat, Mr. Obama had her thrown off the ballot by finding fraudulent names on her petition.)

Moreover, Mr. Ayers was invited by Michelle Obama to speak at a forum on education that she sponsored in 1997:

Close-up on juvenile justice
Nov. 6, 1997

Author, former offender among speakers

By Jennifer Vanasco
News Office

Children who kill are called “super predators,” “people with no conscience,” “feral pre-social beings” — and “adults.”

William Ayers, author of A Kind and Just Parent: The Children of Juvenile Court (Beacon Press, 1997), says “We should call a child a child. A 13-year-old who picks up a gun isn’t suddenly an adult. We have to ask other questions: How did he get the gun? Where did it come from?”

Ayers, who spent a year observing the Cook County Temporary Juvenile Detention Center in Chicago, is one of four panelists who will speak on juvenile justice at 6 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 20, in the C-Shop. The panel, which marks the 100th anniversary of the juvenile justice system in the United States, is part of the Community Service Center’s monthly discussion series on issues affecting the city of Chicago. The event is free and open to the public.

Ayers will be joined by Sen. Barack Obama, Senior Lecturer in the Law School, who is working to combat legislation that would put more juvenile offenders into the adult system…

Michelle Obama, Associate Dean of Student Services and Director of the University Community Service Center, hopes bringing issues like this to campus will open a dialogue between members of the University community and the broader community.

“Students and faculty explore these issues in the classroom, but it is an internal conversation,” Obama said. “We know that issues like juvenile justice impact the city of Chicago, this nation and — directly or indirectly — this campus. This panel gives students a chance to hear about the juvenile justice system not only on a theoretical level, but from the people who have experienced it.”

By the way, note that Mr. Ayers is not listed as a “former offender.”

Mr. Obama continued in last night’s debate:

[quote]OBAMA: Now, with respect to ACORN, ACORN is a community organization. Apparently what they’ve done is they were paying people to go out and register folks, and apparently some of the people who were out there didn’t really register people, they just filled out a bunch of names.

It had nothing to do with us. We were not involved. The only involvement I’ve had with ACORN was I represented them alongside the U.S. Justice Department in making Illinois implement a motor voter law that helped people get registered at DMVs.

Again, this is a blatant lie.

Mr. Obama worked for Project Vote in 1992, as was chronicled in a 13 year old article from the Chicago Reader:

What Makes Obama Run?
By Hank De Zutter
December 8, 1995

In 1992 Obama took time off to direct Project Vote, the most successful grass-roots voter-registration campaign in recent city history. Credited with helping elect Carol Moseley-Braun to the U.S. Senate, the registration drive, aimed primarily at African-Americans, added an estimated 125,000 voters to the voter rolls–even more than were registered during Harold Washington’s mayoral campaigns. “It’s a power thing,” said the brochures and radio commercials…

Mr. Obama even bragged about working for Project Vote as the highlight of his life as an organizer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Px1Ut433xPU

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Project Vote is ACORN.

They (Project Vote and ACORN) share the same address and the same phone number on their Forms 990 filed with the IRS:





The address above is 1024 Elysian Fields, New Orleans, LA which is listed both as the addres for Project Vote and ACORN on their IRS Forms 990.

Furthermore, Mr. Obama worked for years as a “power” trainer for ACORN, as described by a top ACORN official.

From the Winter 2003 issue of Social Policy:

Case Study: Chicago-The Barack Obama Campaign
by Toni Foulkes

Obama started building the base years before. For instance, ACORN noticed him when he was organizing on the far south side of the city with the Developing Communities Project. He was a very good organizer. When he returned from law school, we asked him to help us with a lawsuit to challenge the state of Illinois’ refusal to abide by the National Voting Rights Act, also known as motor voter. Allied only with the state of Mississippi, Illinois had been refusing to allow mass-based voter registration according to the new law. Obama took the case, known as ACORN vs. Edgar (the name of the Republican governor at the time) and we won.

Obama then went on to run a voter registration project with Project VOTE in 1992 that made it possible for Carol Moseley Braun to win the Senate that year. Project VOTE delivered 50,000 newly registered voters in that campaign (ACORN delivered about 5000 of them).

Since then, we have invited Obama to our leadership training sessions to run the session on power every year, and, as a result, many of our newly developing leaders got to know him before he ever ran for office. Thus, it was natural for many of us to be active volunteers in his first campaign for State Senate and then his failed bid for U.S. Congress in 1996. By the time he ran for U.S. Senate, we were old friends…

Toni Foulkes is a Chicago ACORN leader and a member of ACORN’s National Association Board.

And, as Ms. Foulkes notes, ACORN has been instrumental in every Barack Obama campaign.

Lastly, Mr. Obama also seems to have forgotten that his campaign secretly gave at least $832,598.29 to Citizens Services, Inc.

Citizens Services is the reputed “bookkeeper” for ACORN/Project Vote. But in actuality they are just another ACORN front.

Indeed, they also share the same address as ACORN/Project Vote according to their IRS Form 990.

But unlike ACORN/Project Vote, Citizens Services is not a 501c3. 501c3s, being “charities” are forbidden to participate in partisan politics.

Which is probably why the Obama camp paid the $832,598,000 to Citizens Services, rather than risk losing ACORN/Project Vote’s tax exemption.

As Mr. Obama recently put it, “the acorn does not fall far from the tree.”

So in summation, it is overwhelmingly clear that Mr. Obama is lying about his relationship with both Ayers and ACORN.

Which begs the question:

If Mr. Obama will lie this facilely about something this blatant, why should we believe him about anything?

Even ACORN has had to admit that Mr. Obama is lying about having never worked for them.

From the San Francisco Chronicle:

ACORN comes out swinging

In last night’s debate, Sen. John McCain suggested that ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) was responsible for massive voter fraud that could destroy ”the fabric of democracy.” Now the leaders of the community organizing group have emerged with an aggressive effort to push back.

In a conference call with reporters this morning, they’ve accused McCain — whose recent ad also suggests ACORN has a role in the widespread home mortgage crisis — of an ”outlandish” attempt to “hoodwink the American public” in order to distract from what they say is his “desperate” presidential campaign.

They argued that with regard to their voter registration efforts of more than a million new voters — many of them first-time, and poor — “we should be applauded and, quite frankly, proud of our achievements.” …

ACORN organizers this morning said that Sen. Barack Obama, as a local elected official in Chicago, participated in two training sessions for 50 volunteer leaders.

In addition, he and his law firm represented a group of plantiffs, including ACORN, regarding motor votor [sic] registration issues. They said his campaign has also provided about $80,000 in funding to an independent consulting group, which in turn provided some funding to ACORN to get out the vote…

It’s pretty bad when even ACORN has to point out your lies.

This also puts the lie to what Mr. Obama said last night. But of course ACORN can’t stop lying, either.

As noted above, the Obama campaign actually gave ACORN through their lackeys Citizen Services, Inc. $832,598.29. (Hilariously, the San Francisco Chronicle reporter didn’t even notice the discrepancy.)

Also note that ACORN said it was funding “to get out the vote.” Which is itself yet another contradiction of Mr. Obama’s prior statements.