Obama's committee of the hole

During the run-up to the primaries, Senator Obama did not appear in the Senate to vote on the (Kyl-Lieberman Amendment)calling on the government to designate the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist entity and thus suffer the imposition of sanctions. On the day of the vote on the amendment, however, Obama issued a statement announcing that he would have voted against it. In the statement, the closest he came to addressing the merits of the amendment was his assertion that "he does not think that now is the time for saber-rattling towards Iran." The amendment passed the Senate 76-22 on September 26, 2007, with many Democrats including Hillary Clinton, Harry Reid, Richard Durbin, and Chuck Schumer voting in its favor.

Obama subsequently advanced three explanations for his opposition to the amendment. The McCain campaign usefully compiled them (here). Obama mercilessly attacked Hillary Clinton for her vote in favor of the amendment. At a Democratic candidates' debate in December before the Iowa caucus, for example, Obama returned to the theme of his September 26 statement. The New York Daily News reported:

"Monday's revelation that the Iranian nuke threat was hugely overblown gave Clinton's rivals new zeal to criticize her vote to brand Iran's Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization."

"Obama likened it to her 2002 vote authorizing the Iraq war. "This saber-rattling was a repetition of Iraq," he said."

We can infer from his statements that Obama is opposed to "saber-rattling," and that designating the IRGC a terrorist organization is rattling the dread saber. Appearing before AIPAC the day after he secured the Democratic nomination, however, the time for Obama to rattle the saber arrived. Or at least the time had come to support the designation of the IRGC as a terrorist organization, eight months after the Senate vote on the subject. At his speech to the AIPAC policy conference in Washington on Wednesday, Obama called for "boycotting firms associated with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, whose Quds force has rightly been labeled a terrorist organization."

"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."

As John notes below, however, Obama is not a member of the Senate Banking Committee. Obama claimed membership on the committee so that he could count the committee's action as one of "my deeds."

The bill passed out of the Senate Banking Committee appears to derive in part from other Senate bills (S.3227 and S.970) with which Obama had nothing to do. Last week Obama issued a (press release) applauding the Senate Banking Committee's passage of the sanctions act, "which includes provisions Obama offered last year in the Iran Sanctions Enabling Act of 2007 (S. 1430)." Whatever sanctions on Iran Obama supported in 2007, however, apparently did not constitute saber rattling of the kind that Obama imputed to Hillary Clinton in the run-up to the Democratic primaries.

Barack Obama has proved himself an extraordinarily cynical politician. He doesn't believe in much, but he certainly believes in his own power to make voters believe whatever he says, even when what he says today contradicts what he said yesterday, and even when it constitutes a bald fiction, such as his claim that the Senate Banking Committee is "[his] committee."

Some day it may begin to dawn on attentive observers that Obama represents a type that flourishes on many college campuses. The technical term that applies to Obama is b.s. artist. Obama is an overaged example of the phenomenon, but his skills in the art have brought him great success and he's not giving it up now.

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."

As John notes below, however, Obama is not a member of the Senate Banking Committee.

How does he get away with lies like this and it's never brought to the attention of the general public? He is either lying through his teeth or he's so stupid he doesn't know what committees he's on. The GOP needs to start getting this crap to the public...it's part of their job, and they are failing miserably in doing it.

The link with the article, above, just takes you to the www.PowerLineBlog.com web site. That's a great place to learn what the MSM doesn't want you to know, but it is not the link to this particular article. That link is:

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives2/2008/07/021072.php

This is the related article referenced in that article:
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives2/2008/07/021066.php
(Googling finds more about the topic.)

"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." - B. Obama, 7/23/08

But Obama is not (and never has been) a member of the Senate Banking Committee!

He caught some flack about that one, from Hillary-allied media, but maybe he thinks that now that the media is united behind him, he can get away with such lies, because he's at it again. A few days ago he claimed that the stimulus bill which passed Congress last February was based on his (Obama's) economic plan:

"In January, I outlined a plan to help revive our faltering economy, which formed the basis for a bipartisan stimulus package that passed the Congress." - B. Obama, 9/16/08

But, actually, Obama and his economic proposals had nothing to do with it. He just made that up. The bill was worked out by Pelosi, Reid & Bush. In fact, Obama didn't even bother to show up and vote on the stimulus bill.

The boldness of Obama's lies remind me of the Clintons: Hillary's imagined dodging of enemy gunfire in Bosnia, and Bill Clinton's casual, reflexive, gratuitous lying about almost everything.

I recall when, during one of Bill Clinton's 1992 Presidential debates, he was asked whether he regretted his actions during the Vietnam war (which he got away with dodging, through string-pulling, a fraudulent Naval Reserve enlistment, and a fraudulent Arkansas ROTC enlistment, despite defying two draft notices, though the question he was asked in the debate didn't mention any of those facts). Clinton looked into the camera and replied, with impressive fake sincerity, that he did not regret anything he had done, but he did regret that he hadn't explained it better to the American people - but that, he said, was because he had never been asked about it before!

That was a lie so astonishingly bold that I could scarcely believe my ears, since I knew Bill Clinton's draft dodging had been a major issue when he ran for governor of Arkansas. Yet the media "fact checkers" let Bill Clinton get away with it. So perhaps Obama assumes that since Bill Clinton got away with numerous blatant lies, Obama can, too.

Dave

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