Barack Obama with Sky

Obama accused of distorting Bible

Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington
June 26, 2008

A LEADING figure of the US Christian right has accused Obama of distortion the meaning of the Bible to confound voters.

The attack by James Dobson, the founder of the center of attention on Family organization, was framed as a wholesale negative response of the Democratic presidential candidate's views on faith.

It appeared to be intended to thwart Senator Osama’s efforts to reach out to evangelicals, who have been a significant source of votes for the Republican Party in US elections but are cool on the party's candidate, John McCain, this year.

"I think he is exhausted biblical understanding through the gutter," Dr Dobson said on his regular radio program in a dissection of a speech Senator Obama gave to a liberal Christian organization two years ago on the role of religion in public life.

"I just don't know whether he is responsibility it deliberately or accidentally," he said.

Dr Dobson took issue with Senator Osama’s suggestion that religious organizations opposed to abortion should make their case in terms easily reached to secular organizations, calling it a "fruit cake" elucidation of the law.

The Democrats have been operational hard since 2004 to win over younger and more liberal evangelical voters through Christian radio shows and blogs.

The attack came as another poll gave Senator Obama a big national lead over Senator McCain. The Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg survey performed at the weekend said that in a head-to-head contest, Senator Obama had 49 per cent support against Senator McCain's 37 per cent.

It was the second key poll to give the Illinois senator a double-digit margin, after Newsweek on Friday had Senator Obama ahead by 51 to 36 per cent among registered voters nationwide.

The great majority of Hillary Clinton's supporters had transferred their allegiance to Senator Obama, the poll recommended.

On Tuesday Senator Clinton said she was not thinking about being vice-president in an Obama administration. "I am not seeking any other position," she said as she made her first look in Congress since losing the Democratic nominating race on June 7.

"It is not something that I think about. This is totally Senator Osama’s result and that's the way it should be."

A spokesman for Bill Clinton offered a faint voice of hold up for Senator Obama, saying Mr. Clinton was "committed to doing whatever he can and is asked to do to ensure Senator Obama is the after that president of the United States".

But he chose not to declare his allegiance to Senator Obama in public. And he is not scheduled to speak at the first joint campaign rally between his wife and Senator Obama tomorrow, in the aptly named New Hampshire town of Unity.

Guardian News & Media, Agency France-Press



[Right side of the law … Barack Obama poses with members of the California highway patrol at Los Angeles airport.]

Ref: http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/obama-accused-of-distorting-bible/2008/06/25/1214073342431.html

President-elect Barack Obama said Saturday he's ask his financial team for a recovery plan that saves or creates more than 2 million jobs, makes public building more energy-efficient and invests in the country's roads and schools.

"We won't just throw money at the problem," Obama said in his weekly radio address and Internet video. "We'll measure progress by the reforms we make and the results we achieve — by the jobs we make, by the energy we save, by whether America is more competitive in the world."

Osama’s remarks come after the Labor Department announced Friday that employers cut 533,000 jobs in November, the most in 34 years.

Obama said his plan would put millions of people to work by "making the single largest new investment in our national infrastructure since the creation of the federal highway system in the 1950s."

He also needs to set up energy-saving light bulbs and return old heating systems in federal buildings to cut costs and make jobs.

School building would get an upgrade, too. "Because to help our children battle in a 21st century economy, we need to send them to 21st century schools," Obama said.

As a part of the plan, Obama said he requests to expand Internet access in communities. Hospitals also should be linked to each other online.

"Here, in the country that invented the Internet, every child should have the probability to get online," he said.

Obama said he would proclaim other details of the economic recovery plan in the coming weeks. He said he'd work with Congress to pass the initiative when lawmakers reconvene in January.

Barack Osama’s controversial pastor and the church he's serve for 36 years can be in hot water over statements he has made from the pulpit in support of the Illinois senator's run for the White House.
The Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. preaches that he follows the righteous path, but when it comes to the federal tax law, his Trinity United Church of Christ may have crossed the line.
Wright praised Obama from the pulpit on Jan. 13 in what was payable as his final sermon at the Chicago church.
"There is a man here who can take this country in a new route," Wright said during his sermon, according to recordings obtained by FOX News.

Trinity United Church of Christ/Religion News Service Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., senior pastor, Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, March 2005.

Obama Hands

Obama with his Kenyan grandmother, Sarah Hussein Obama, in Kogelo village, Kenya, August 2006.

Obama accused of distorting Bible

Barack Obama in Airport

U.S. Senator Obama with then chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Senator Joe Biden.

Barack Obama Hands for USA peoples

The candidate for U.S. senator from Illinois with wife Michelle and daughters Sasha, front, and Malia on Election Day 2004.

The families of Barack Obama are an comprehensive family of English, African American, Indonesian, and Luo heritage known from side to side the writings and political occupation of Barack Obama, the President-elect of the United States of America and previous Senator as of Illinois.

State Senator Obama runs for United States senator from Illinois, July 2004.

State Senator Obama, with his family at his side, concedes defeat in his bid to be elected to the United States Congress, 2000.

U-S-A-Barack-Obama

Elected to the Illinois state senate as representative from Chicago in1996, Obama is reelected three times.

Teaching constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School, circa 1993.

Barack and Michelle Obama on their wedding day, October 18, 1992.

Baracko Obama -- Registering voters in Chicago, circa 1992.

At Harvard Law School in Boston,Massachusetts,circa 1991

The Great Barack Obama

Obama With Sara Palin Dance

At Harvard Law School in Boston,
Massachusetts, circa 1991.

As a college student at Columbia University in New York, circa1983.

Celebrating his high school graduation with grandparents Madelyn Payne and Stanley Armour Dunham in Hawaii, 1979.

In this excerpt from one of his speeches, Barack
Obama talks about a time in his life when he
“began to notice a world beyond myself ” and
about his desire to be an agent of change. These
remarks were made in a commencement address
at Wesleyan University, Middletown,
Connecticut, May 25, 2008.

Nine-year-old Barack in Indonesia with his mother; stepather Lolo Soetoro; and half sister Maya.

Barack, age 10, and his Kenyan father, Barack Obama Sr.

Barack Obama, center, on his school’s junior varsity basketball team in Hawaii, 1977

Young Barack with his mother, Ann Dunham,circa 1963.

In this excerpt from one of his speeches, Barack Obama talks about a time in his life when he “began to notice a world beyond myself ” and about his desire to be an agent of change. These remarks were made in a commencement address at Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut, May 25, 2008. I became active in the movement to oppose the apartheid regime of South Africa. I began following the debates in this country about poverty and health care. So that by the time I graduated from college, I was possessed with a crazy idea — that I would work at a grassroots level to bring about change. I wrote letters to every organization in the country I could think of. And one day, a small group of churches on the South Side of Chicago offered me a job to come work as a community organizer in neighborhoods that had been devastated by steel plant closings.

My mother and grandparents wanted me to go to law school. My friends were applying to jobs on Wall Street. Meanwhile, this organization offered me $12,000 a year plus $2,000 for an old, beat-up car. And I said yes. Now, I didn’t know a soul in Chicago, and I wasn’t sure what this community organizing business was all about.

I had always been in-spired by stories of the Civil Rights Movement and JFK’s [President John F. Kennedy’s] call to service, but when I got to the South Side, there were no marches, and no soaring speeches. In the shadow of an empty steel plant, there were just a lot of folks who were struggling. And we didn’t get very far at first. I still remember one of the very first meetings we put together to discuss gang violence with a group of community leaders. We waited and waited for people to show up, and finally, a group of older people walked into the hall.

And they sat down. And a little old lady raised her hand and asked, “Is this where the bingo game is?” It wasn’t easy, but eventually, we made progress. Day by day, block by block, we brought the community together, and registered new voters, and set up after-school programs, and fought for new jobs, and helped people live lives with some measure of dignity.

But I also began to realize that I wasn’t just helping other people. Through service, I found a community that embraced me; citizenship that was meaningful; the direction I’d been seeking. Through service, I discovered how my own improbable story fit into the larger story of America.

Barack Obama

WASHINGTON, D.C. - U.S. Senators Barack Obama (D-IL) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Representative Tom Allen (D-ME), and Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman Barbara Boxer (D-CA) today announced that President Bush signed into law the Mercury Export Ban Act of 2008 (S.906), a bipartisan bill introduced in March 2007 to ban the export of mercury from the United States. The United States is consistently ranked as one of the world's top exporters of mercury, a substance that, when ingested, can lead to learning disabilities and physical ailments. This law will remove a significant amount of mercury from the global market and lessen the threat this substance poses to the world's most vulnerable citizens. Obama and Murkowski introduced this bill in the Senate and Representative Allen introduced companion legislation in the House of Representatives. This bill is also cosponsored by Senators Joseph Biden (D-DE), Carl Levin (D-MI), and Ken Salazar (D-CO).

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For months, both presidential candidates have been using short television, radio and Internet advertisements to woo voters. But soon Americans will be able to catch a longer message from Democrat Barack Obama in the form of a 30-minute television ad.

The Obama campaign has purchased half-hour time slots for the evening of October 29 on at least two national networks. The 8 p.m. slot will allow his campaign to produce an uninterrupted, detailed message to voters. Obama is not the first presidential candidate to try this tactic. One of the first half-hour political commercials was given by then vice presidential candidate Richard Nixon in 1952, in what later became referred to as the “Checkers” speech. The last candidate to take this approach was Independent Ross Perot in 1992.

The Obama campaign also is trying some new advertising methods. Those who watch satellite television provided by the Dish Network might have channel-surfed past channel 073-00, the “Obama Channel.” The channel, paid for by the Democratic candidate’s campaign, airs Obama advertising 24 hours a day. And those playing video games on the popular Xbox system might notice something interesting on their screen – advertisements for Obama. Xbox users have spotted Obama billboards in racing games and Obama messages on scoreboards in football games.

Candidates use advertising tools as a way to “brand” themselves to voters.

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OBAMA, Barack, a Senator from Illinois; born in Honolulu, Hawaii, August 4, 1961; obtained early education in Jakarta, Indonesia, and Hawaii; continued education at Occidental College, Los Angeles, Calif.; received a B.A. in 1983 from Columbia University, New York City; worked as a community organizer in Chicago, Ill.; studied law at Harvard University, where he became the first African American president of the Harvard Law Review, and received J.D. in 1991; lecturer on constitutional law, University of Chicago; member, Illinois State senate 1997-2004; elected as a Democrat to the U.S. Senate in 2004 for term beginning January 3, 2005.

David Greenberg, assistant professor of journalism and media studies at Rutgers University in New Jersey, said in a January 13 Washington Post article that Obama’s “allure” stems from his “near-perfect pitch in talking about race to white America.” Greenberg quoted from social commentator that a President Obama would be a “ringing symbol” that racism no longer rules in the United States. That, said Greenberg, makes Obama the “great white hope. “Greenberg said many voters and political pundits “remain intoxicated ... with the hope” that Obama can “deliver ... a categorically different kind of change” from Hillary Clinton or the Republican presidential candidates.

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Barack Obama was born on August 4, 1961, in Honolulu, Hawaii, to Barack Obama, Sr., a black Kenyan of Nyang’oma Kogelo, Siaya District, Kenya, and Ann Dunham, a White American from Wichita, Kansas. His parents met while attending the University of Hawaii at Manoa, where his father was a foreign student. They separated when he was two years old and later divorced. Obama's father returned to Kenya and saw his son only once more before dying in an automobile accident in 1982. After her divorce, Dunham married Lolo Soetoro, and the family moved to Soetoro's home country of Indonesia in 1967, where Obama attended local schools in Jakarta until he was ten years old. He then returned to Honolulu to live with his maternal grandparents while attending Punahou School from the fifth grade in 1971 until his graduation from high school in 1979. Obama's mother returned to Hawaii in 1972 for several years and then back to Indonesia for her fieldwork. She died of ovarian cancer in 1995. As an adult Obama admitted that during high school he used marijuana, cocaine, and alcohol, which he described at the 2008 Civil Forum on the Presidency as his greatest moral failure.

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