Phony Obama talks trash on small town Pennsylvanians

Obama the elitist. The following words come from the junior senator from my state.

From Politico:

You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not.

And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

Is this the same Obama who loves to bring up his 2004 Senate campaign visit to Cairo (pronounced KAY-ro), Illinois? It's an impoverished and shrinking town at the southern tip of the state, an ex-city really, with a nasty history of racial animosity.

He talks up that trip here, here, and here.

The last link is from the New York Times in 2004:

Along the campaign trail, Mr. Obama often tells a story about Cairo, a downstate Illinois town that struggled with deep racial problems 30 years ago. All he needs to say is the name - Cairo - and members of his audiences, especially those from southern Illinois, nod knowingly or swallow hard at the painful memory.

But then he finishes the story, telling how he rode to Cairo a few months ago, and was greeted with a crowd of residents, white and black, cheering in a parking lot and all wearing blue Obama buttons. The message is hopeful. His listeners speak of his transcending the usual distinctions of race.

I've been to far southern Illinois a few times but not Cairo. I've visited rural Pennsylvania, and the folks aren't that diffrenent from each other: The downstaters just speak with a nasal drawl that combines the Southern and Midwestern accents.

So was Obama's storied trek to Cairo, and the "hopeful message" just a charade of his designed to tug on the emotions of the susceptible? It could be.

Obama spends a couple of pages in The Audacity of Hope about that caravan to Cairo and how he was warmly greeted by a white man named Ed Smith, a top official of the Laborers' Union who was also a member the that union's Local 773, described by Obama as "one of the most powerful men in the region." Even Obama admits Smith brought the crowd there to see the budding "rock star."

Something Obama takes pride in is his legal work on behalf of voters' rights in the 1990s. Two presidential elections ago, a lawsuit filed in 2005 alleges a vote buying scheme took place in the Cairo area. Ed Smith was named as one of the defendants.

From the Southern Illinoisan:

Allegations surfaced in mid-February 2000, only days after absentee voting began in Alexander County, that people were being paid to vote for specific candidates. Several courthouse employees reported witnessing numerous absentee voters carrying small pieces of paper with four numbers - 35, 64, 83 and 104 - written on them. It was also reported that voters were being paid $3 to vote after they returned to a parking lot adjacent to the courthouse.

The four candidate names that corresponded with the numbers on the primary ballot were McGinness (83), Woolard (64), McRoy (104), and Smith (35). Smith was a candidate to be a delegate for Al Gore at the 2000 Democratic National Convention; the others ran for the offices indicated. All four were victorious in the primary.

After complaints were registered, the Illinois State Board of Elections and the Attorney General's office both conducted investigations prior to the primary election. The investigations centered on a political action committee that was operated through Laborers Local 773 in Cairo.

I don't know the current status of that case. But it's ironic that Obama, the voters' rights advocate, is silent about what allegedly happened in 2000 in Alexander County, and what did occur during the general election four years later--a massive vote buying scheme in East St. Louis engineered by the local Democratic Party that resulted in five convictions. Obama was on the ballot for that election. In addition to cash, select ESL voters received booze and cigarettes.

Hey, I voted in that election, and although I'd have trouble proving damages--Obama's inept Republican opponent Alan Keyes received only 27 percent of the vote, but my right to a free and fair elections, guaranteed to me in the Illinois State Constitution in Article III, Section Three, was clearly violated. Should I have sued? No one paid me to vote!

Obama's a fraud. He'll kowtow to Ed Smith, who is leaving the Laborers' Union at the end of this month, but remain silent on allegations of vote fraud (when it involves Democrats).

However, perhaps the real Obama came out the other day when he disparagingly talked about those Pennsylvanians in of all places, San Francisco. If that's true, thanks senator, for letting us know now. Maybe he felt the same way about the people of Cairo when he met them four years ago. They're really not that different from each other.

Thanks for the links:

Backyard Conservative
Ankle Biting Pundits

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