"The swiftboating of Obama begins"

stilwell on Northwest Progressive Institute:

Clearly Barak Obama is unfit to serve because he wanted a bigger front yard.

There have been no allegations that Obama, whose political fortunes are soaring as he mulls a run for president, broke the law or committed any ethics violations. He said he has done no government business with Rezko, who is facing charges in two unrelated criminal cases.

The most disturbing thing to me about this horrible scandal is how Obama is letting the media tell him what to do. He didn't do anything wrong, nobody alleges he did anything wrong (other than some good government types who are "concerned,") and yet The Washington Post decides to put it on page A6.

Look, there are lots of scummy people in politics. Shockingly, there are scummy people in Chicago politics.

Some would argue most people in politics are, in some way, untrustworthy. If you banned from politics everyone who did business with scummy people, most of the state legislatures in this country would be largely empty.

As soon as I heard last month about this terrible incident involving a bigger yard for the Obama family, I pretty much concluded the media would never let it go. And they haven't and they won't. See, it balances out. The Bushes are tied closely to the Saudi Royal family, and Barak Obama had some low-rent guy who wanted to run Panda Express outlets at the the Chicago airport try to butter him up. The Saudi Royal family and Mr. Panda Express guy are pretty much equivalent, huh?

And now Obama feels compelled to criticize himself for making a "bone-headed mistake."

So what happens next is the noise machine starts producing books about Whitewateryardgate, followed by serious editorials in leading newspapers about "judgement" and "lack of experience" and "legitimate concerns." Pretty soon half the country believes Obama is running a secret drug cartel from Central America. It's not like we haven't seen this play before.

People may be yearning for a more civilized discourse in this country, but that can't happen until the media stops it with the double standard. Has it occured to anyone at all that maybe Obama actually just wanted a bigger yard?

Meanwhile, the current occupant of the White House anwers to nobody, not even his Dad's advisers. Whether the Democratic Congress successfully changes that remains to be seen. If Obama wants to be president, he better figure out how to deal with a severely hostile, mostly incompetent and biased media.

Here's another quote from the Washington Post article:

Stewart, of the Better Government Association, said Obama took responsibility and did not shy away from questions. If there are no further revelations, he said, "it's going to wind up being a footnote," but "if anything further comes out, it's a different story."

Cute. So when it pops up on Drudge, there's the signal for everyone to attack.

What may be most remarkable about 2006 is that we won despite a press corps that holds Democrats to different standards than Republicans. In an age of unprecedented Republican corruption, they have to show their "objectivity" by turning an apparently insignificant land deal over a tiny slice of yard into a major national story. That's pretty pathetic. Obama isn't even my personal favorite, and that's another story, but he just got hosed by The Washington Post.

Jerome Armstrong reveals his crush on Barack with "Obama: The Message."