Obama: Not Really Presidential Material

Almost always the column here is "site-specific," but this time I'm reprinting a column from my national blog. Today on my Pennsylvania blog I talk about a critical issue you won't hear about from the national media: the need for Republican candidates for Congress to dovetail their campaigns with that of John McCain. As this week unfolds, I'll be talking about the question of why Senator Clinton stays in the race. One reason is that she's aware of the devastating shortcoming of Barack Obama, as illustrated by the piece below. Clinton may end up campaigning for Obama, but she will do it with her fingers crossed. She's now looking ahead to running against President McCain in 2012. Meanwhile, McCain is looking closely at Gov. Sarah Palin as a running mate. Yes, we live in what the Chinese call "exciting times."

Obama speaking and curing Pastor's insomnia .

A political campaign "biography" emerges as pure fiction . . .

One of the best conservative columnists in the U.S. is Jack Kelly of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Jack's work appears every Sunday in the P-G and the Toledo Blade. His most recent column is "The Potato Test: Obama Generates Even More Gaffes Than Dan Quayle."

Kelly says, "In last week's column, I twitted Mr. Obama for saying he'd campaigned in 57 states, for not knowing that his home state of Illinois borders on Kentucky and for claiming the Cuban Missile Crisis (October, 1962) was defused by President Kennedy's summit meeting with Nikita Khrushchev (June, 1981). Earlier, Mr. Obama said 10,000 people were killed when a tornado struck Greensburg, Kansas, last year (the death toll was 12), and assumed Afghans speak Arabic (they don't)."

In this week's column Kelly examines Obama's latest fabrication, where he said his "uncle" was one of the American soldiers who "liberated Auschwitz." In fact, as we've all been reminded, it was the Russian Red Army that liberated that particular death camp. Also, Obama didn't have an "uncle" in the U.S. military, because his mother (Anna Dunham) was an only child. (Any uncles on his father's side lived in Africa and were not in the American military.)

Responding to such observations, Obama's camp replied that the candidate had misspoken. He was really referring to his great uncle, Charlie Payne, who had been a member of the 89th Infantry that had liberated a slave labor camp associated with Buchenwald.

The national press basically left the issue there, but Jack Kelly doesn't.

Obama's great-uncle (still very much alive) apparently didn't serve in the Army. According to the Kansas Historical Association, Payne enlisted in the Navy on November 10, 1942. There's no evidence he was ever anywhere near Buchenwald.

On other occasions, Obama has invoked his maternal grandfather, Stanley Dunham, whom the Illinois Senator claims "signed up for the war the day after Pearl Harbor was bombed." In fact, Mr. Dunham enlisted not on December 8, 1941, but rather on June 18, 1942.

Obama has said Grandpa Dunham "heard the stories of fellow troops who has entered Auschwitz and Treblinka." Unfortunately for Obama, Treblinka -- like Auschwitz -- was liberated by the Red Army, so it's unlikely his grandfather heard any stories about those particular death camps.

How long do we have to put up with Obama spinning fantasies about his life and the lives of family members? In his own life, Obama has NO real links to the military, so he invents them, somehow feeling his tall tales will help qualify him as a credible commander-in-chief.

Jack Kelly is doing the nation a service in pointing out the Senator's constant fabrications.
In many ways, the Illinois Senator remains the most mysterious of men. However, the more we do know, the more disturbing this strange individual becomes.