The Case Against Obama Reviewed

Editorial Reviews

Review
Obama a Lefty, Not a Reformer

The first serious negative biography of Senator Barack Obama casts the Democratic nominee as a fake reformer and a real liberal.

The Case Against Barack Obama by National Review's David Freddoso, blasts Obama for failing to take on the Chicago machine, for listening to "radical advisors," and for backing "doctrinaire liberal" causes from teachers unions to abortion rights.

It does not, however, compare him to Paris Hilton, or dwell at length on his religion or race - making the substance of The Case Against Barack Obama sound a bit unfamiliar amid a campaign cacophony of hyperbolic web ads, alleged race cards, and viral smears.

Freddoso says John McCain's campaign and Republicans at large are making the wrong case against the Illinois senator.

"I don't think you beat Obama by saying that he's Paris Hilton," said Freddoso, a reporter for the conservative magazine National Review, referring to McCain's latest advertising campaign. "The more important thing is really to look at is he who he says he is? Is he really this great reformer?"

Freddoso's book, released today by the conservative publishing house Regnery and provided exclusively to Politico by the publisher, occupies a small island in the often-shrill sea of criticism of Obama. As a range of conservatives suggest that Obama is a closet radical, and as McCain's campaign aims to disqualify him from the White House on the grounds of his international fame, Freddoso makes a case that conservatives should look at the presumptive Democratic nominee's record.

His thesis: "It's not that Obama is a bad person. It's just that he's like all the rest of them. Not a reformer. Not a Messiah. Just like all the rest of them in Washington. And just like all the other liberals too."

Freddoso's is one of two new books harshly attacking Obama. The other, by Jerome Corsi, reportedly covers some of the same territory as the viral emails that have plagued the Democratic candidate, making much of his slender connections to Islam and his teenage drug use.

Freddoso opts largely for a fact-based critique, and writes that the viral and overt smears have allowed Obama to evade substantive criticism.

"Too many of those criticizing Obama have been content merely to slander him," he writes. False rumors about Obama's religion and ancestry have produced, Freddoso writes, "an intellectual laziness among the very people who should be carefully scrutinizing Obama."

His book comes with Republican popularity at a historic low, amid widespread disenchantment with Republican ideals of limited government and hawkish foreign policy. Many - including, apparently, McCain's strategists - doubt a Republican can win a policy face-off. But as the real campaign hones in on the character of the candidates, Freddoso's book attempts to build an alternate case against Obama. Freddoso's argument begins in Chicago....Though Obama's first political steps were in Hyde Park's reformist politics, Freddoso focuses on the smooth accommodation he made to the machine.... -- Politico, Ben Smith, August 4, 2008 

Review
Here's Looking at You, Kid

If find yourself believing that "we are the ones we've been waiting for", or that "this is the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow" or even, tout court, that "yes we can", the chances are that you are suffering from a severe case of Obamamania.

Tens of millions of Americans and an even larger number of Europeans have fallen victim to the syndrome, which involves a belief that a young black senator from Chicago can cure the world's ills, in part because of his race, in part because of his obvious intelligence and rhetorical skill; but in no part because of any record of achievement in the past. Fortunately, an inexpensive remedy is at hand.

It comes in the form of a new book by David Freddoso, The Case Against Barack Obama. Unlike the authors of some of the cruder attacks on Mr. Obama, Mr. Freddoso works for a well-respected organization, the online version of the National Review. Although it is a conservative publication and the author makes no secret of where his political sympathies lie, this is a well-researched, extensively footnoted work. It aims not so much to attack Mr. Obama as to puncture the belief that he is in some way an extraordinary, mould-breaking politician.

The Obama that emerges from its pages is not, Mr. Freddoso says, "a bad person. It's just that he's like all the rest of them. Not a reformer. Not a Messiah. Just like all the rest of them in Washington." And the author makes a fairly compelling case that this is so. The best part of the book concentrates on Mr. Obama's record in Chicago, his home town and the place from which he was elected to the Illinois state Senate in 1996, before moving to the United States Senate in 2004. The book lays out in detail how this period began in a way that should shock some of Mr. Obama's supporters: he won the Democratic nomination for his Illinois seat by getting a team of lawyers to throw all the other candidates off the ballot on various technicalities. One of those he threw off was a veteran black politician, a woman who helped him get started in politics in the first place.

If Mr. Obama really were the miracle-working, aisle-jumping, consensus-seeking new breed of politician his spin-doctors make him out to be, you would expect to see the evidence in these eight years. But there isn't very much. Instead, as Mr. Freddoso rather depressingly finds, Mr. Obama spent the whole period without any visible sign of rocking the Democratic boat.

He was a staunch backer of Richard Daley, who as mayor failed to stem the corruption that has made Chicago one of America's most notorious cities. Nor did he lift a finger against John Stroger and his son Todd....Cook County, where Chicago is located, has been extensively criticized for corrupt practices by a federally appointed judge....

Take a break from the hugs, hopium with a good read

If what you want from Sen. Barack Obama's historic Democratic convention speech on Thursday night is to give yourself up to profound emotion and to join others in common passion and release, then guzzle some hopium and enjoy. Or you can enrich the experience by reading The Case Against Barack Obama: The Unlikely Rise and Unexamined Agenda of the Media's Favorite Candidate by David Freddoso. Freddoso's book, on the best-seller lists, is the anti hopium. It is the pin of reason to the Obama balloon. 

Sarah Palin Is Ready!

Is Sarah Palin Ready To Be President If Necessary

I had an old friend ask me if I really wanted Sarah Palin a heartbeat away from the Presidency...
My answer is yes, because I think Sarah Palin is capable and would be a fine and capable V.P or President, if put in that position!! And she will get even better with time! I also think that McCain-Palin and the experience team that McCain will bring with him to the White House is exactly what we need during these difficult times. (The constant chant by the Democrats of more of the same is b.s... I have even heard several honest informed Democrats speak about how McCain has stood up to fellow Republicans, including George Bush, many times!). And Sarah Palin certainly is not more of the same!

She seems to be a quick study, full of energy and is obviously not controlled by Washington or previous alliances there... nor other negative influences and associations like Obama. And I think Biden is a bumbling idiot!! Sarah is also not hiding things like her or her husband's thesis or college records etc etc, like 'both the Obamas are. As soon as people have to have things closed or hidden until 'after the election', no matter how benign it may seem, it raises a flag... and is often just the tip of the iceberg. And Obama just has too many of those unknowns, unclear and unquestionable issues for me!

Neither presidential candidate would have been my first choice for President... but we have to work with what we have. And I am not a Hillary fan either, so it is not like I'm for Palin because she is a woman. I have read all four of the candidates' books, and just about every book about them, written by anybody and everybody that is out there. I watched both Conventions, virtually in full, have seen all four candidates and several of their rivals in the primaries speak in-person at rallies, and I read whatever I can on line, on the paper or magazines listen to contrary views on the radio. And I try to watch news about them on TV from varying sources, including BBC Coverage. And I blog myself and do some ghost writing on politics for several sources... so I consider myself better informed than most.

First of all, John McCain's mother is 96 years old and as ‘with it’ as you or I... although sometimes I worry about myself. ;-)  So longevity with mental acuity runs McCain's family. So I am really not that worried about McCain not making it through at least one term, if not two in decent health, and Palin will be ready if she needs to step into his shoes in the future. And some of what makes McCain seem older is due to the injuries he suffered in service of this Country, while many people were burning their draft cards, for which he should be thanked... not penalized or made fun of, as I heard by some young journalists doing after the last debate. I say shame on them!! He could have and maybe should have died his hair, for this reason, but I see it as a lack of vanity and an example that he is comfortable being himself...

Secondly, Sarah Palin has more executive experience than Obama, just not at the national level, so some of the things Katie Couric and gang asked her, in order to make Sarah Palin look stupid, just weren’t in her frame of reference or things she had needed to know up to his point. And as she said herself, in the end, she stopped answering the questions because she thought they were getting to be stupid. I heard Brian Williams, a journalist that prides himself on being neutral and reporting the news, not his opinions, say that Sarah Palin really has gotten kind of a raw deal and that he would love to interview her. Sarah Palin is also full of raw excitement that hasn’t been marred by the battle scars of being Washington.

All of Obama’s cloak and dagger stuff coupled with his lack of experience and game playing… like voting ‘present’ 45% of the time because he doesn’t want to look even more liberal and less mainstream than he is or already does, if that is even possible, plus his propensity for spending boils down to lack of trust, lack of character and questionable motives to me… and Biden is a ninny who spends half his time taking his foot out of his mouth and the other half changing his position from what it was before Obama chose him! Whereas McCain, who is not perfect… but again who is or could be after 30+ years in Washington, is pretty honest and does have a record of reaching across the aisle and standing up against his own party over the years… and he is a generally honest man who has given his life to the service of our Country, so has the experience we need. And Palin is a breath of fresh air!! She is a "real" person and closer to the concerns of average American than any of the other 3-candidates... and Obama is the most elitist of them all. Obama is great at talking in circles, but if you look at his voting record and do the math of the bits and pieces of his elaborate plans vs. his tax policy that he actually talks about... we can't afford him and he will definitely put us on the road to socialism and cut our freedoms!

"And some of this Obama philosophy is discussed in the book, The Case Against Obama… that I really feel everyone needs to read before the election, but he does not speak about it often… which again, in itself, is odd! In writing, he also candidly explains that effect of his (Obama’s) purposeful ‘opacity’ and lack of specificity on voters: 'I am new enough on the national political scene that I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views. As such, I am bound to disappoint some, if not all, of them." Indeed... and he has taken money and created alliances with all kinds of worrisome associates that just might add to that disappointment!

By Ask Marion - I encourage everyone to check out the Audacity of Socialism 

The Audacity of Socialism

 Barack Obama has styled himself a centrist, but does his record support that claim? 

In this series, we examine Senator Obama's past, his voting record and the people who've served as his advisers and mentors over the years. We'll show how the facts of Obama's actions and associations reveal a far more left-leaning tilt to his background — and to his politics.

" Obama has a philosophy.  It is discussed in the book, The Case Against Obama… that everyone needs to read before the election, but he does not speak about it often.  In writing, he also candidly explains that effect  of his (Obama’s) opacity and lack of specificity on voters:  'I am new enough on the national political scene that I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.  As such, I am bound to disappoint some, if not all, of them."

The question is how much will he disappoint his followers and the American people in general, if elected?!?  Let us hope we don’t find out!!!

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Part Twenty

Ayers Has Not Left Radicalism Behind

Election '08: Bill Ayers isn't out bombing anymore, but he's never stopped being a radical. His ties to hostile Marxist regimes remain, raising more questions about Barack Obama's refusal to fully repudiate him.

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Part Nineteen

If Bailout Plan Is Too Socialistic, Just Wait For Obama Leviathan

Election '08: Have Americans been so lulled by Barack Obama's smooth talk that they don't realize his plans would expand government into a massive socialist behemoth? His is a soft-spoken, hard-left agenda.

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Part Eighteen

Obama's McKnight In Shining Armor

Election '08: Obama needed help getting into Harvard Law School. He got it from a disciple of Saul Alinsky who shared the socialist agitator's belief in the radical change the young community organizer could embrace.

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Part Seventeen

Chicago Commune

Election '08: Barack Obama summed up well the perversity of Democratic Party thinking when he told Fox News' Bill O'Reilly that it is "neighborliness" for Washington to hike taxes on those who are "sitting pretty."

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Part Sixteen

How Obama Applies Alinsky's Rules

Election '08: Barack Obama's mocking of John McCain, while urging his followers to "get in their face," are tactics right out of his radical hero Saul Alinsky's playbook: ridicule and agitation.

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Part Fifteen

Community Organizer In Chief

Election '08: Barack Obama claims he worked for a "small group of churches" as a community organizer. In fact, he was hired by a radical Alinskyite group, and Saul Alinsky's own son has outed him.

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Part Fourteen

Sojourning Socialists

Election '08: Barack Obama has joined forces with a white socialist he calls a "good friend" — the Rev. Jim Wallis, founder of "Sojourners." He too believes in "liberation theology," sans the black nationalism. In fact, Wallis is the white version of Jeremiah Wright, sans the black rage.

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Part Thirteen

Michelle's Boot Camps For Radicals

Election '08: Democrats' reintroduction of militant Michelle Obama in Denver was supposed to show her softer side. But it only highlighted a radical part of her resume: Public Allies.

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Part Twelve

Alice In Obamaland

Election '08: One of the "lies" Barack Obama says are being told about him is quite true. It involves a staunch admirer of the Soviet Union and its communist society who helped launch Obama's political career.

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Part Eleven

Finding Friends On Far, Far Left

Election '08: The saying that a man is known by the company he keeps is true of political relationships. In Barack Obama's case, some of the groups that support him are an indictment of his political orientation.

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Part Ten

Like Father, Like Son

Election '08: Barack Obama's economic blueprint sounds like one his communist father tried to foist on Kenya 40 years ago, with massive taxes and succor shrouded as "investments."

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Part Nine

Obama's Radical Roots And Rules

Election '08: Most Americans revile socialism, yet Barack Obama's poll numbers remain competitive. One explanation: He's a longtime disciple of a man whose mission was to teach radicals to disguise their ideology.

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Part Eight

Obama's Little Red Schoolhouse

Schools: While Obama's children enjoy the best education money can buy, he wants to deny inner-city children the education change we can believe in — school choice. He prefers cradle-to-diploma collectivist education.

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Part Seven

Reparations By Another Name

Election '08: Barack Obama says Washington shouldn't just offer apologies for slavery, but also "deeds." Don't worry, he says, he's not talking about direct reparations. Relieved? Don't be.

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Part Six

Obama Finds An ACORN

Election '08: The man who includes being a community organizer on his short resume has a long association with a far-left group that would organize our communities into socialist gulags.

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Part Five

Young Obama's Red Mentor

Election '08: The mainstream media have finally gotten around to revealing Barack Obama's early mentor. But they've downplayed the mystery man's communist background.

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Part Four

Obamanomics Flunks The Test

Election '08: Barack Obama the lawyer-organizer could use a crash course in economics. His economic plan's assumptions, based on long-discredited Marxist theories, are wildly wrongheaded.

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Part Three

Obama Wants You

Election '08: Barack Obama calls it "Universal Voluntary Public Service." We call it a plan for national involuntary servitude. Kennedy asked us what we could do for our country. Obama has ways to make us volunteer.

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Part Two

Obama's Global Tax

Election '08: A plan by Barack Obama to redistribute American wealth on a global level is moving forward in the Senate. It follows Marxist theology — from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.

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Part One

Barack Obama's Stealth Socialism

Election '08: Before friendly audiences, Barack Obama speaks passionately about something called "economic justice." He uses the term obliquely, though, speaking in code — socialist code.

Source(s):  IBD Editorials & the Daily Thought Pad

Pull The Hair Plug On This Guy

If Sarah Palin had made just one of the wildly inaccurate statements smugly uttered by Sen. Joe Biden in last week's vice presidential debate, there would have been 3-inch headlines in newspapers across America. (I can almost hear Katie Couric asking me, "Which newspapers?")

These weren't insignificant errors, such as when Biden said, "Look, all you have to do is go down Union Street with me in Wilmington or go to Katie's restaurant or walk into Home Depot with me where I spend a lot of time, and you ask anybody in there whether or not the economic and foreign policy of this administration has made them better off in the last eight years."

It turns out that Katie's restaurant, where Biden gets his feel for the average American, closed 20 years ago. The only evidence that he spends any time in Home Depot is that it appears that a pipe wrench fell on his head one too many times.

Palin would surely have been forced to withdraw from the ticket had she said something like that, but most of Biden's errors were not trifling mistakes like these. They were lengthy Lyndon LaRouche-like disquisitions that were pure fantasy from beginning to end.

For example, Biden said about Hezbollah: "When we kicked -- along with France -- we kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon." Hezbollah was never kicked out of Lebanon.

He continued: "I said and Barack said, 'Move NATO forces in there. Fill the vacuum, because if you don't, Hezbollah will control it.'" This is madness -- Lebanon is not a NATO country, nor had any NATO country been attacked by Lebanon.

Somebody please tell me that Biden wasn't picked for the Democrat ticket based on his knowledge of foreign policy.

Biden also stoutly denied that Obama ever said he would sit down with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Liberals find it hilarious that McCain can't use a computer keyboard on account of his war injuries, but Biden is apparently unaware of the Internet, because there are clips all over the Internet of Obama saying exactly that during the CNN/YouTube debate last year.

Biden might have remembered that debate since: (1) He was there, and (2) he later attacked Obama's answer, telling the National Press Club in August 2007: "Would I make a blanket commitment to meet unconditionally with the leaders of each of those countries within the first year I was elected president? Absolutely, positively, no."

And that's still not all! Obama's own Web site says: "Obama supports tough, direct presidential diplomacy with Iran without preconditions."

Somebody please tell me that Biden wasn't picked for the Democrat ticket based on his ability to remember well-known facts.

Biden also gave a long speech at the debate on vice president Dick Cheney's "dangerous" belief that "he's part of the legislative branch." The great constitutional scholar Biden cited Article I of the Constitution as proof that Cheney "works in the executive branch" and has "no authority relative to the Congress." Biden huffily added: "He should understand that. Everyone should understand that." 

Palin would have had to deny that Alaska is a state in the union in order to say something comparably stupid. 

Article II, not I, describes the executive branch. Someone tell Biden, who is supposed to be a lawyer. Apart from getting the Articles of the Constitution mixed up, what on earth does Biden mean when he says that the vice president "has no authority relative to Congress," apart from breaking ties?

The Constitution makes him president of the senate every day of the week. I realize that Biden may not be able to count to two, but Article I says the vice president is president of one of the two houses of Congress -- the one Biden is in, for crying out loud -- which is what you might call "authority relative to Congress."

Somebody please tell me that Biden wasn't picked for the Democrat ticket based on his knowledge of the Constitution.

In one especially hallucinatory answer, Biden authoritatively stated: "With Afghanistan, facts matter, Gwen. ... We spend more money in three weeks on combat in Iraq than we spent on the entirety of the last seven years that we have been in Afghanistan building that country."

According to the Congressional Research Service, since 9/11, we've spent $172 billion in Afghanistan and $653 billion in Iraq. The most money spent in Iraq came in 2008, when we have been spending less than $3 billion a week. So by Biden's calculations, we've spent only about $9 billion "on the entirety of the last seven years that we have been in Afghanistan building that country." There isn't even a "9" in $172 billion.

Somebody please tell me that Biden wasn't picked for the Democrat ticket based on his knowledge of math.

In the same answer, Biden went on to claim that "John McCain voted against a comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty that every Republican has supported."

The last nuclear test ban treaty the Senate voted on was the one Clinton signed in the '90s. As The New York Times editorialized on the Senate vote a few years later: "Last week, Senate Republicans thundered 'no' to the nuclear test ban treaty, handing the White House its biggest defeat since health care in 1994." Forty-nine Republicans voted against the treaty; only four liberal Republicans voted for it. That's the treaty Biden says "every Republican has supported."

Somebody please tell me that Biden wasn't picked for the Democrat ticket based on his ability to function as vice president.

By: Ann Coulter is Legal Affairs Correspondent for HUMAN EVENTS and author of "High Crimes and Misdemeanors," "Slander," ""How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must)," "Godless," and most recently, "If Democrats Had Any Brains, They'd Be Republicans." 

And then we have people like the '_itches' on the View ponder if having Palin a heartbeat from the Presidency is a problem... come on people!! Sarah Palin is not only more capable than Biden, she has more executive experience than Obama!

" Obama has a philosophy too.  He writes about and it is discussed in this book, but he does not speak about it often.  In writing, he also candidly explains that effect  of his opacity and lack of specificity on voters:  'I am new enough on the national political scene that I serve asa blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.  As such, I am bound to disappoint some, if not all, of them."

The Real Obama

Critics of Senator Barack Obama make a strategic mistake when they talk about his "past associations." That just gives his many defenders in the media an opportunity to counter-attack against "guilt by association."  It is past and present chosen alliances that are the problem!

We all have associations, whether at the office, in our neighborhood or in various recreational activities. Most of us neither know nor care what our associates believe or say about politics.

Associations are very different from alliances. Allies are not just people who happen to be where you are or who happen to be doing the same things you do. You choose allies deliberately for a reason. The kind of allies you choose says something about you.

Jeremiah Wright, Father Michael Pfleger, William Ayers and Antoin Rezko are not just people who happened to be at the same place at the same time as Barack Obama. They are people with whom he chose to ally himself for years, and with some of whom some serious money changed hands.

Some gave political support, and some gave financial support, to Obama's election campaigns, and Obama in turn contributed either his own money or the taxpayers' money to some of them. That is a familiar political alliance-- but an alliance is not just an "association" from being at the same place at the same time.

Obama could have allied himself with all sorts of other people. But, time and again, he allied himself with people who openly expressed their hatred of America. No amount of flags on his campaign platforms this election year can change that.

Unfortunately, all that most people know about Barack Obama is his own rhetoric and that of his critics. Moreover, some of his more irresponsible critics have made wild accusations-- that he is not an American citizen or that he is a Muslim, for example.

All that such false charges do is discredit Obama's critics in general. Fortunately, there is a documented, factual account of what Barack Obama has actually been doing over the years, as distinguished from what he has been saying during this election campaign, in a new best-selling book.

That book is titled "The Case Against Barack Obama" by David Freddoso. He starts off in the introduction by repudiating those critics of Obama who "have been content merely to slander him-- to claim falsely that he refuses to salute the U.S. flag or was sworn into office on a Koran, or that he was born in a foreign country."

This is a serious book with 35 pages of documentation in the back to support the things said in the main text. In other words, if you don't believe what the author says, he lets you know where you can go check it out.

Barack Obama's being the first serious black candidate for President of the United States is what most people consider remarkable but how he got there is at least equally surprising.

The story of Obama's political career is not a pretty story. He won his first political victory by being the only candidate on the ballot-- after hiring someone skilled at disqualifying the signers of opposing candidates' petitions, on whatever technicality he could come up with.

Despite his words today about "change" and "cleaning up the mess in Washington," Obama was not on the side of reformers who were trying to change the status quo of corrupt, machine politics in Chicago and clean up the mess there. Obama came out in favor of the Daley machine and against reform candidates.

Senator Obama is running on an image that is directly the opposite of what he has been doing for two decades. His escapes from his past have been as remarkable as the great escapes of Houdini.

Why much of the public and the media have been so mesmerized by the words and the image of Obama, and so little interested in learning about the factual reality, was perhaps best explained by an official of the Democratic Party: "People don't come to Obama for what he's done, they come because of what they hope he can be."

David Freddoso's book should be read by those people who want to know what the facts are. But neither this book nor anything else is likely to change the minds of Obama's true believers, who have made up their minds and don't want to be confused by the facts.

By Thomas Sowell