Triad Today
Fridays at 6:30am onABC 45Sundays at 10pm onMy 48
About Triad Today
Our Sponsors
About Jim Longworth
Knights of the Round Table
Commentaries
Video Segments
Books by Jim Longworth
Studio Location
Awards and Recognition
Public Appearances
Contact Us via email

Index of Past Commentaries

June 20th / 22nd, 2008

"Unfortunately, Barack Obama is a Fraud"

I detest disclaimers, but for those of you who have never read one of my columns or watched my TV show, be advised: I am not a Republican or a Democrat. I am an Independent, and I attack candidates of both parties with equal zeal. And that brings me to the young hypocrite, Barack Obama.

Senator Obama has promoted his Presidential campaign as being inclusive of all people. Sort of a “No Voter Left Behind” approach. He says all of the right things, and makes all of the right promises. But underneath the touchy-feely rhetoric is a man who has risen to power on a fast track provided him by a notorious political machine, and he has stepped on anyone who got in his path along the way.

Recently, Obama stood by and allowed the DNC to steal half of Hillary’s votes in Michigan and Florida. Then he endorsed a plan that awarded him 100% of the unaffiliated votes in Michigan. Those two actions gave Obama the nomination.

But how could a man who preaches unanimity and inclusiveness help to disenfranchise millions of voters in his own party? I didn’t fully understand that myself until CNN brought to light Obama’s tactics during his first legislative campaign back in 1996.

As a rookie, Obama was to face off against two well known Democratic opponents (both African American) in the primary, one of whom was incumbent Alice Palmer.

The first thing Obama did was to have his staff review the petitions of his opponents. At that time, candidates were required to gather 757 signatures in order to get their name on the ballot in Chicago. Both of Obama’s opponents had collected well over a thousand signatures each, but Barack challenged the validity of the petitions. Soon thereafter, the Board of Elections disallowed hundreds of people who had only printed their name, rather than writing it. Palmer and the other contenders came up short (some by as few as 60 names), and they were denied an opportunity to rectify the problem, which they didn’t even realize was a problem in the first place. Obama’s name was the only one on the ballot, so he won the Democratic primary by default, then won the general election easily in a Democratic controlled district.

David Jackson and Ray Long of the Chicago Tribune wrote, ”A close examination of Obama’s first campaign clouds the image he has cultivated throughout his political career. The man now running for President on a message of giving a voice to the voiceless first entered public office not by leveling the playing field, but by clearing it.”

Once in the Illinois State Senate, Obama sat for six years having passed no legislation until Emil Jones ascended to the post of Majority leader and decided to fast track Barack for higher office. In a period of one year, Jones took bills that were about to pass, and high jacked them from other legislators so that he could attach Obama’s name to them. These included bills on: children’s health insurance; establishing an earned income tax credit for low income families; requiring public bodies to videotape closed-door meetings; and, requiring police to videotape interrogations of homicide suspects. If these bills sound familiar they should. Obama frequently refers to them in his Presidential stump speeches whenever he wants to display his street cred for getting legislation passed.

Illinois State Senator Rickey Hendon was the original sponsor of the racial profiling and videotaped confession bills only to have them snatched away by Jones and handed to Obama. Hendon told Todd Spivak of the Houston Press, “I took all the beatings and insults, and endured all the racist comments over the years from nasty Republican committee chairmen. Barack didn’t have to endure any of it, yet, in the end, he got all the credit. I don’t consider it bill-jacking, but no one wants to carry the ball 99 yards all the way to the one-yard line, and then give it to the halfback who gets all the credit and the stats in the record book.”

But that’s what happened, and Obama rode that undeserved glory into a run for the U.S. Senate in 2003.

In that race, Democrat frontrunner Blair Hall had the nomination in the bag when, just by some coincidence, a few weeks prior to the election, the records of Hull’s divorce were unsealed, revealing charges that his ex-wife made regarding physical abuse. Hull’s numbers plummeted and Obama sneaked into the Democratic nomination.

Barack was slated to face GOP millionaire Jack Ryan in the general election. But Ryan was forced to drop out of the race when a Judge suddenly decided to unseal his divorce records, which revealed charges from his ex that he had tried to make her perform sex acts in public.

The GOP couldn’t come up with a viable replacement that late in the game (they recruited Alan Keyes) and Obama won the election in a landslide, appearing to be the Mr. Clean candidate.

The question is, how did a young lawyer in Chicago know to challenge petitions in his first campaign? And, how was he able to have those petitions thrown out on a technicality so that his opponents would have no opportunity to react?

How is it that divorce records of his opponents were suddenly and conveniently unsealed just in time for him to win a U.S. Senate seat which he had no chance of winning?

Probably because the Daley machine was behind Obama, and, with the help of Majority Leader Jones, was able to fast track Barack for stardom. Daley is the Mayor of Chicago and son of Richard Daley, the late king maker who allegedly helped the Kennedys steal Illinois from Nixon in the 1960 election.

I have no idea what Daley and his cronies stand to gain from putting Obama in the White House, and I don’t care. That’s because the really scary part of Obama’s meteoric rise to power isn’t speculation about being in the pocket of a political machine, but that his rise was manufactured, and that, along the way, he or his backers helped to dispose of Barack’s opponents by hook or by crook.

Obama’s theft of unaffiliated votes in Michigan now seems to fit a pattern. And, his idle acceptance of the DNC’s decision to deny Hillary her 190 votes in Michigan and Florida demonstrate his propensity for dirty politics. Had Clinton been awarded the votes from those two states she would have pulled into a virtual tie with Obama, and the so-called super delegates would have been hard pressed not to award the nomination to a woman who garnered more popular vote than any primary candidate in history.

Obama has managed to charm his audiences and the media alike, none of who seems to be aware of their hero’s past. Harold Lucas, a community organizer in Chicago told Todd Spivak, “He’s (Obama) been given a pass. His career has been such a meteoric rise that he has not had time to set a record.”

Spivak went on to publish a story about this phenomena which included interviews with a number of Chicago-based African American leaders such as Lucas, and all were critical of Obama. In February of this year, Spivak reported in an on-line column that the day after his story ran, Obama called him and was irate.

“I started to speak”, wrote Spivak, “and he shouted me down.”

The harsh reality is that Barack Obama didn’t deserve to win his first seat in the Illinois State Senate. He didn’t deserve to win his seat in the United States Senate. And, he didn’t deserve to win the nomination in this year’ s Presidential primary.

He got where he is by having voter petitions disqualified, by taking credit for legislation which he didn’t pass, by benefitting from mysteriously unsealed court documents of his opponents, and by allowing over 2 million voters to be disenfranchised.

I don’t care about Richard Daley. I don’t care about Reverend Wright.

And I certainly don’t care about the color of Barack’s skin (I worked for and with Governor Doug Wilder, and I supported Colin Powell for President). What I do care about is that many Americans cannot bring themselves to vote for John McCain (myself included) and are poised to elect Obama to the White House based on credentials and ethics which he does not really possess.

As an Independent I have voted for Ralph Nader in previous Presidential elections, so it won’t be difficult for me to go that way again. I’m only sorry that I can’t justify voting for Obama. I wanted to believe that he was the real deal, but now I know he’s just another political hack. Even worse, he is a fraud.

It’s not too late for Democrats to embrace the truth about Obama, and release all delegates to take a floor vote at the convention. But that won’t happen. True to form, Obama has already had Hillary eliminated, and his machine isn’t about to let her be resurrected. Barack doesn’t know how to win anything fair and square. Why should he start now?