Pinocchiobama

Barack Obama seeks to portray himself as a new type of politician. He wants to lead us, he says, with hope for the future, change in the present and repudiation of the past eight years so that America can exchange the failed policies of the last eight years for those of the past one hundred years, He seeks, if you will, to transcend politics. But if you were to take an objective look at Obama, you could reasonably conclude that Obama transcends politics by making the typical politician appear more honest. With each passing day, a new lie springs forth from Obama’s mouth causing university professors and ivy league graduates to faint at the non-truth that affirms their world view.

In 1996, Barack Obama’s campaign responded to a questionnaire by indicating that Obama favored bans of the manufacturing and selling of guns, opposed parental notification of abortions for minors, and opposed the death penalty. When asked about that, Obama threw his campaign staff under the bus, claiming the staff had sent in the questionnaire. He issued a blanket denial that he had ever held those positions. Except that is not true. As RedState noted, a review of the actual document shows “that [Obama] reviewed the answers closely enough to revise some of the answers in his own handwriting.”

On Afghanistan, Barack Obama claims to be the only politician willing to re-engage the Taliban. He faults the Bush Administration for depleting the number of military personnel in Afghanistan and claims we need to increase the number of ground forces to 92,000 troops, something Obama says the Bush administration is opposed to. Funny how Secretary of Defense Robert Gates offered the exact same policy prescription and number of troops back in 2007.

On Iraq, Obama accuses John McCain of wanting a one hundred year war in Iraq. Speaking on MSNBC’s Hardball, Obama said, “John McCain got upset today apparently because I had repeated exactly what he said, which is that we might be there [Iraq] for 100 years if he had his way.” Only, that is another lie. As RedState documented, the Washington Post’s FactCheck, the Annenberg Public Policy Center’s nonpartisan FactCheck.org, and the Columbia Journalism Review all report Obama’s words were grossly misleading. The Annenberg Public Policy Center called Obama’s statement a “serious distortion to the point of rank falsehood.”

Obama’s latest lie is, to the paragons of political virtue, perhaps his worst. Campaigning in Pennsylvania, Obama is running a television ad in which he says, "I’m Barack Obama. I don’t take money from oil companies or Washington lobbyists, and I won’t let them block change anymore." That’s not exactly true. First, no candidate can take money from oil companies; corporations are prohibited from giving money. Corporations can, however, give a maximum contribution of $5,000.00 to a candidate via a political action committee (“PAC”). Obama has not received that $5,000.00. Instead, he has taken in $213,000.00 from individuals who work for oil companies. While Chevron could have only given him $5,000.00 through its PAC, Obama took in $9,500.00 from Chevron employees. That $213,000.00 total from oil company employees does not even include the money from lobbyists Obama took but claims he did not take.

Whether lying about his resume, quitting smoking, or what he did or did not know about Reverend Wright, Barack Obama is telling the truth on one issue: he is not your typical politician. A typical politician could never have told as many lies as Barack Obama and been given a free pass by the traditional media.

Obama does not take lobbyists' money.

While pledging to turn down donations from lobbyists themselves, Sen. Barack Obama raised more than $1 million in the first three months of his presidential campaign from law firms and companies that have major lobbying operations in the nation’s capital.