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Sobering and Disheartening Aug 6, 2008 (271 of 321 found this helpful)
Too many reviews have dismissed this book as "propaganda" or a "smear" without any clear evidence to back up those labels. Rather than debate Freddoso's carefully constructed, well-researched contentions, these "reviewers" (almost all of whom, I assume, have never even read the book) resort to baseless mudslinging.
In reality, I found this book incredibly well-documented and surprisingly objective. As Freddoso himself notes on many occasions, the book does not try to make any of the sensational claims bandied about by some. It does not attempt to "out" Obama as a closet-Muslim or claim that an Obama presidency would bring about the end of America. It merely attempts to dull the blinding sheen that the media has placed on Obama and his vapid message of "hope and change".
Those who take the time to read this book with an open mind will be in for a revealing look at Obama's meteoric rise. Freddoso carefully documents Obama's close connections with the seediest elements of Chicago politics, the myriad occasions on which he passed up opportunities to denounce "politics as usual" as a state legislator, and his Clinton/Rove win-at-all-costs mentality.
What results from this analysis is a picture of Obama that is much less sparkling than the one painted by his many admirers in the media. Beyond the lofty promises of "hope and change" lies the unremitting ambition of a "reform" candidate who has failed to reform or stand up for anything in his political career.
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He's slick -- and he's dangerous Aug 5, 2008 (462 of 558 found this helpful)
If you ever had any doubts about the glib deviousness and empty rhetoric of Barack Obama, elaborations on these meticulously researched and documented items in this book should convince you he's the most dangerous candidate ever to run for the presidency in the history of America:
- How Obama won his first election (to the Illinois State Senate) by having his lawyers knock all his opponents -- including the black, female incumbent -- off the ballot on technicalities, so he could run unopposed.
- How Obama voted to deny medical care to babies born alive after abortion -- a bill too extreme even for Nancy Pelosi (Freddoso has an exclusive interview with the nurse central to the case).
- A story Obama would like to stay buried in Chicago: How he used his clout as a U.S. Senator to save the corrupt Cook County Political Machine when reformers of both parties tried to challenge the entrenched political bosses.
- How Obama's wife Michele's salary nearly tripled in 2005 -- the same year he was sworn in to the U.S. Senate and began earmarking funds for her employer.
- How Obama's friendship with the hate-spewing Reverend Jeremiah Wright was no accident -- but a carefully thought out personal and political decision.
- Why Obama thought his association with '60s-era terror-bomber Bill Ayers wouldn't matter -- an exposé of the insular radical chic of Chicago's Hyde Park politics.
- How state Senator Obama was paid more than $100,000 for legal work -- then helped his client's company get $320,000 in taxpayer grants.
- How, at a time when he says he was short of work and short of cash, Obama obtained $112,000, plus campaign contributions, from someone he later made into a government grantee through his public office.
- Inside Obama's 17-year relationship and irregular land deal with developer Tony Rezko, whose livelihood depended on sapping the taxpayer for subsidies.
- "I've never done any favors for him," says Obama about Rezko. But he has -- lots of them, as Freddoso shows.
- Why Rezko's conviction for corrupting public officials might become the Whitewater scandal of Obama's campaign.
- How Obama speaks of the days when his family was making $240,000 per year as if he had been suffering poverty -- while, just last March, he voted to raise your taxes if you make over $32,500 per year.
- The Chicago Machine politician who "made a U.S. senator" out of Obama by giving him plum committee assignments and high-profile legislation in its late stages (often removing the original sponsors), and helping him spread money around through earmarks and "targeted" grants.
- How Obama avoided taking unpopular stands in the state Senate by voting "present" about 130 times -- or simply by absenting himself from tough votes altogether.
- Obama's little-known vow to Planned Parenthood in July 2007 -- and why it would mean the end of every state, federal, and local regulation of abortion, and the end of all restrictions on government abortion funding.
- A "new politics?" How, in less than four years as a U.S. senator, Obama has voted for some of the worst special-interest legislation to move through the chamber.
- How Obama opposes school choice through vouchers or tax credits -- while sending his own children to an elite private school.
- How Obama wants -- and has voted -- to abolish secret-ballot elections in the workplace when employees determine whether to unionize, allowing unions to intimidate and harass workers who don't support them.
- Why Obama's foreign policy would take its cues from Jimmy Carter's.
- "Post-partisan?" Why the respected National Journal named Obama the most liberal member of the United States Senate in 2007 -- beating out Barbara Boxer, Ted Kennedy, Hillary Clinton...and the
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Abraham Lincoln he is NOT Sep 22, 2008 (107 of 130 found this helpful)
Before reading this book, I had no idea that Barack Obama had gone to such great lengths to challenge hundreds of signatures on the ballot petition of his Democratic Illinois State Legislative opponent---enough so that she was disqualified and did not run.
The long and the short of that effort was that Illinois voters did not have a choice. I would not think that is the kind of change one ought to be proud of. A genuine one-candidate ballot, in a nominally Democratic nation.
The same might be inferred from Barack Obama's run for the U.S. Senate, in which his Republican opponent was suddenly smeared on a grotesque personal level---with facts that were indeed available to Obama's staff---two weeks before the election. Until that point, the candidates were running neck and neck. After, however, the Republican withdrew from the race, and no one took his place. Obama ran unopposed, once again. For the U.S. Senate.
In other words, Obama's political career has been more or less unvetted by the voters. He is, as he has said himself, a clean slate onto which idealists can project anything they like. And that is a huge problem.
For Obama's slate is apparently not so clean as the general mainstream press would have Americans believe.
Politics is very dirty indeed, but in Chicago Illinois, it is possibly dirtier and more corrupt than in any other U.S. locality. The Democratic machine rules. And Barack Obama is an ingrained part of Mayor Daley's corrupt, wasteful Democratic machine. Committed Chicagoan Democrats and Republicans alike have objected.
David Freddoso's superb, calm, collected, well-documented reporting (he's an above-average Columbia Journalism school graduate) demonstrates just how up-to-his neck in Chicago machine politics Obama has been.
Obama has voted for pork barrel farm subsidies to support ethanol, despite substantive scientific and environmental documentation demonstrating that ethanol production is a wasteful process responsible for driving food prices ever higher, while providing virtually no energy advantage.
Obama campaigned aggressively in favor of public campaign finance----only until it became apparent he could raise more money privately, at which point he disavowed his previous political principal.
Obama sponsored mostly bills authored by other people, a fact that his Chicago machine connections and advisers successfully absconded for him.
Even before reading this book, I had serious doubts about Obama. Now, though, the picture of an empty suit is complete.
And please---do not shout "racist" unless you take the trouble to read the book yourself. The facts have little or nothing to do with the man's skin color.
This book is neither conservative, nor liberal. It is a simple, declarative set of facts, extremely well documented. Those who argue Freddoso created a set of base smears have obviously not taken the trouble to read it. Rather, Freddoso goes to great lengths to invalidate baseless smears, e.g. that Obama was not born in the U.S.
Alas, there are many more substantive problems with this candidate that wise voters will want to examine before pulling the lever on Nov. 4.
There are plenty of facts, however, that clarify the point: About the only thing Obama has in common with Abraham Lincoln is that he moved to Illinois from elsewhere and sought office there.
Obama's record is a vapid landscape of "present" votes, of avoiding controversy, of failing to back genuine educational, financial, political and other change, of failing to eradicate slums, and of failing the poor and working Americans whom Obama professes to support.
Obama is just another wealthy elitist.
Independent, Democratic and Republican American voters---everyone, in short---really cannot afford to cast ballots without re
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The Case Against Barack Obama Aug 5, 2008 (734 of 928 found this helpful)
[...]
Since Obama himself is so obtuse about his background, beliefs, accomplishments (are there any?), etc., it is imperative that someone actually do the research to find out about the true Obama before handing him the highest office in the land. As a person who employs other people, I would want much more information than what is on Obama's thin public resume.
This book does that research for you and comes up with the fact that Obama's resume IS thin. He decided after only 143 days in the US Senate that he was ready to step up and be President. He has the most liberal voting record in the US Senate. He attended a racist church for twenty years and then only quit the church when it became a political liability. He was a community organizer in Chicago whose main accomplishment was getting asbestos removed from a single apartment house and even then they didn't remove all of it. This is the experience you need to run the country?
America is ready for a man or woman of any skin color, ethnicity, religion to be President but they must at least meet the minimum qualification of being "experienced" in executive management. Obama has never run anything in his life other than a campaign. We don't need another Jimmy Carter no matter what skin color he is.
Buy the book and actually do some research before voting. [...]
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Obama Is Even SCARIER Than I Thought...Get the Facts Here! Aug 5, 2008 (262 of 331 found this helpful)
Like many Americans, I've seen the media bend over backwards to portray Barack Obama in a favorable light. On the Yahoo homepage, for example, I counted the number of Obama headlines during a one-month time and compared them to the number of McCain headlines. The difference was striking. Obama made news even when the news seemed to be "Obama Sneezes!" or "Obama Helps Little Old Lady Cross Street!" or "Obama Reacts to McCain's Reaction!"
The media absolutely LOVES Obama. Why? What happened to the independent media, the press being the fourth estate, the watchdog of the people? Somewhere along the way, the media became the lapdog of the liberal left. And that's why Obama is dubbed "the Messiah" by conservative talk-show hosts.
Who is Obama? Where did he come from? What does he really believe? I've been wondering those questions and many more for months now. When I first encountered Obama and his women-swoon-during-his-speeches persona, I was intrigued. But when I started to hear reports that he had the most liberal voting record in Congress, that he was an inexperienced first-term Senator who hasn't accomplished anything of substance since taking office, and that his friends ranged from racists to terrorists...I began to wonder if I'd ever get the truth about Obama.
The Case Against Barack Obama answers my questions and gives me the information I need to talk to people who have succumbed to his siren song of "change." Thanks to The Case Against Barack Obama, I now know that the kind of change he stands for is the kind the people of the Soviet Union and Communist China have been trying to throw off for decades. Obama is a radical left-wing socialist who wants the government to control our lives from cradle to grave.
I suspected Obama wasn't what he claimed. But I had no idea he was this bad. Seriously, Barack Obama is THE most dangerous man in politics. If he is elected President, he will create change, all right -- he'll cause America to take a giant leap to the left. If you want to know what that will look like, ask your European friends, those people who stagger under tax burdens of 60%-70% of their income, who have to wait forever in long lines for health care, and who struggle to breathe free and live to their full potentials.
Barack Obama scares me. Not because he's black. But because he's dishonest, radically leftist, and as divisive as any politician I've ever seen. He may preach "hope" and "change" and being a "unifier." But his actions do not match his words.
The Case Against Barack Obama is an eye-opening book for those who may be on the fence, or who need solid facts to help educate friends who have been duped. Barack Obama makes Slick Willy look like a rank amateur. Read this book and see why.