blogger interrupted

I always knew that this election would get ugly.  In fact, back when I supported Hillary Clinton for president, one of my main arguments in support of her was that the hard right would lose their minds, overplay their attack, and it would backfire.  

But with Barack?  My.  Fucking.  God.  It is mid-August, and already the hard right is calling Barack Obama the anti-christ, an infanticidal maniac, a jihadist Muslim Arab terrorist, and those are just the tip of the iceberg.  Here in Ohio, our lovable wingnut Ohio Republican bloggers are gleefully taking up the task.

Which brings me to Tom Blumer.  

Blumer likes to pretend that he’s an intellectual, his blog is named “Bizzyblog” to give him some veneer of economic analysis, and he pretends he’s a thinker.  But that fact is, based on his writing, he’s nothing but a racist.  

This post from yesterday proves it, in which Blumer decides to claim that Barack Obama is lying about his own father, by re-linking to himself from 18 months ago.

A drunk and a bigot - what the US Presidential hopeful HASN’T said about his father…

We have discovered that his father was not just a deeply flawed individual but an abusive bigamist and an egomaniac, whose life was ruined not by racism or corruption but his own weaknesses….

The junior senator from Illinois appears to have created a set of convenient fictions about the life of his father. Even that’s okay; we all have to make peace with the past, and thinking about our loved ones idealistically is one way of doing that. But by publishing a book that pushes those convenient fictions on the rest of us, and using that book to burnish HIS political (and now presidential) credentials, Barack Obama is asking us to demanding that we accept and buy into his alternative reality. If Churcher is correct, and there’s little reason to believe she isn’t, that’s an imposition on the American public that Obama has no right to make — and voters should seriously question the judgment of someone who would attempt to make such an imposition.

Blumer basically says that Barack never wrote about any of his father’s deep flaws in his book “Dreams of My Father”.  

That is a lie.  

From the Obama campaign’s response to page 37  of Jerome Corsi’s book of lies, which it appears Blumer just opened and is parroting from the get go.  

LIE:  “Obama failed to discuss his father’s alcoholism and polygamy in his autobiography.” [p 24] “Obama’s story of his father’s life is dense, presented in anything but a straightforward manner, often glorified or embellished so as to mask much of the harsh and, for Obama, probably painful truth.” [p 37] 

REALITY:  OBAMA WROTE EXTENSIVELY ABOUT HIS FATHER’S FLAWS IN “DREAMS” 

Obama Wrote About His Father’s Drinking Throughout Dreams from My Father. Obama writes Auma said, “At the time, I just saw that life at home became very difficult. The Old Man never spoke to Roy or myself except to scold us. He would come home very late, drunk, and I could hear him shouting at Ruth, telling her to cook him food. Ruth became very bitter at how the Old Man had changed… Finally Roy just left. He just stopped coming home and started living with different people. So I was left alone with the Old Man. Sometimes I would stay up half the night, waiting to hear him come through the door, worrying that something terrible had happened. Then he would stagger in drunk and come into my room and wake me because he wanted company or something to eat. He would talk about how unhappy he was and how he had been betrayed. I would be so sleepy, I wouldn’t understand anything he was saying. Secretly, I began to wish that he would just stay out one night and never come back.” [p 216-217] 

 Obama Wrote He Asked Himself If His Father Was “A Bitter Drunk.” “Now, as I sat in the glow of a single light bulb, rocking slightly on a hard-backed chair, that image had suddenly vanished. Replaced by . . . what? A bitter drunk? An abusive husband? A defeated, lonely bureaucrat? To think that all my life I had been wrestling with nothing more than a ghost!” [p 220] 

Obama Wrote His Father’s First Wife Was Kezia, Mother To Four of His Children. Obama’s father’s wife was Kezia Obama. Before he left Kenya, he fathered Auma and Roy with Kezia. After he had returned to Kenya years later, she also gave birth to Bernard and Abo. [Africa News, 8/15/04; Dreams from my Father, p 316, p 335] 

Obama Wrote His Mother Said There Was No Legal Documentation That Could Show a Divorce From His First Wife. In Dreams From my Father, Obama writes that his mother Ann Dunham said, “your father’s first wife…he had told me they were separated, but it was a village wedding, so there was no legal document that could show a divorce.” [Dreams from my Father, p 126] 

Obama Writes That His Father’s Third Wife Refused To Life With His First Wife. In Dreams from my Father, Obama writes that one of his relatives said, “once Barack [Sr.] agreed to marry Ruth, she could not accept the idea of his having Kezia as a second wife.” Ruth was the mother to Mark and David. [Dreams from my Father, p 213, p 423] 

Obama Wrote Obama Sr. Fathered His Last Child With an Unnamed Woman. Obama writes that before he died, Obama Sr. “had just fathered another son, George, with a young woman he was living with.” Obama writes that his sister Auma said, “The Old Man’s last girlfriend, the mother of our baby brother, George— she wanted everything.” [Dreams from my Father, p 265-266, p 218] 

Blumer lying about Barack Obama is not a surprise.  Blumer literally opening up Jerome Corsi’s book and failing to get through page 37 before blogging Corsi’s lies in whole, is also not a surprise.  But Blumer lying about Barack Obama to call his father a drunk bigot and bigamist, while Barack Obama himself actually has written about what Blumer claims is some big secret, shows Blumer’s real agenda.

Tom Blumer is a bigoted, lying, racist who thinks he can dog-whistle John McCain’s way to winning Ohio in November.   Well, this year, people in Ohio are watching.  Lots of them.  

Boohoo.

Ouch.

UPDATE - in case you can’t stomach being at Blumer’s hate site, here’s the comments he’s been moderating since I called him a lying bigot.   He’s deleting anything that calls him out on his lies.

#

Hi guy.

Here is what I am able to post of the comments you recently wished to have posted here:

you (should) know the Telegraph is a known Tory smeer rag through which Republicans float garbage like this.

“Smear” is s-m-e-a-r. I can see how someone in your position might confuse its spelling with that of “beer.”

I’m sorry the rest of your comments had to be ignored because it consisted of uncalled-for and unsupported name-calling of your humble host.

Assuming you read the post,, you should know that my position on the above UK Telly article is that “I haven’t seen anything that would lead me to believe that there is something wrong with Churcher’s story.”

The question of the post is how accurate Churcher’s story is, not the real or imagined party favoritism of the Telly.

I am of course capable of missing a evidence-supported refutation that may have been published somewhere of some or all of the facts in Churcher’s story. If I become aware of one, I would note that such partial or full refutation has occurred.

But I have yet to see one. That statement remains true, making your name-calling indefensible and inexcusable. Thus, you owe me an apology. Since you’re likely out of practice, I’ll remind you that the words of such an apology would be an unconditionally delivered “I was wrong, I am sorry.”

Given the apparent title of the post you have put up at your place responding to this post, I would ordinarily not be inclined to bother visiting to see if you actually present anything that is fact-based. But I may make an exception, put on my hazmat suit and head on over at some point. I certainly have no obligation.

In the meantime, you are welcome to attempt a name-calling-free, profanity-free response here to the points raised in the post.

Comment by TBlumer — August 18, 2008 @ 9:32 am

#

ok, how’s this. read the post. or barack’s book. and then you apologize.

Comment by Tim Russo — August 18, 2008 @ 9:49 am

#

#2, No Tim, the way it could conceivably work is:

- I learn something new.

- I note that I have learned something new.

- I thereby implicitly or explicitly acknowledge that my statement that “I haven’t seen anything that would lead me to believe that there is something wrong with Churcher’s story” is no longer true.

- I owe an apology to no one, because I never made an untrue statement or posted anything that I knew to be untrue.

That’s how it would work.

At some point in the next 72 hours because of pressing business matters, I might read your post. Given your treatment of me and the lack of a substantive apology, I am under no obligation to do that.

The need for an apology from your for unwarranted name-calling stands, regardless. You are of course still welcome to attempt to make another comment here. But as long as there’s no apology, I’m under even less obligation to post it than I am under my usual posting policy.

10:17 Update — Tim, I see that you couldn’t restrain yourself from engaging in name-calling yet again. I therefore will not be going to BI, and the qualified invitation extended to you to comment at this post is withdrawn.

BOOHOO!  OUCH!

Popularity: 5% [?]